Densho Digital Repository - Amy Uyematsu Interview I (Densho ID: ddr-densho-523-11)

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BN: Where did you spend your teaching career? What schools?

AU: Okay. I started out at Virgil junior high, which is on Vermont near L.A. Community College. Very rowdy school, and I lasted there two and a half years. And I say two and a half because the third year, the first semester, a couple of things happened. I had a young eighth grade gang member, he was in 18th Street gang, come up and talk to me face to face saying, "I'm going to shoot you." Because I was trying to instill some discipline in the class. And then that same, we're pretty sure it was 18th Street gang, slashed a whole bunch of the teacher's tires in the parking lot. And so I decided, you know what? I think maybe I'd rather be in high school than in junior high. Junior high is just kind of crazy, right? So from there, I transferred mid-year to Grant High School in Van Nuys. And I was at Grant for almost twenty years. And then after Grant, I went to Granada Hills, and then I spent my last six years of teaching at Venice High School, which is close to where I live now in Culver City. But people always say, "Why were you commuting so far all those years?" Because I was always on West L.A. or on the west side, but I'd go over the hill to the valley to teach.

BN: What did you tell them when they asked you that?

AU: I didn't have a good reason. Other than, you know, you make friends. Like at Grant High School, I had good friends. Plus, the commute wasn't as bad in those days. Driving has gotten so much worse.

BN: Yes, definitely have noticed that. What did you particularly like or dislike about teaching?

AU: I liked the kids. I always enjoyed the kids, I liked the relationship with them. I enjoyed trying to take math concepts and trying to break it down so they could understand it. So that part of it was fine. The part I didn't like was the administration and the bureaucracy. We have these people that couldn't... the way we looked at it, they couldn't last, survive in the classroom, so a lot of them became math administrators. And then they're dictating to us what we should be teaching and how we should be teaching. And many of us teachers that were right there at the ground level were very resentful of these bureaucrats. Like they would change books on us every couple of years, they would change the direction. The kids didn't have any basic math kills and they'd say, "No, you have to be teaching them this level of math," and they weren't ready for it. So that's my big complaint.

BN: Were there any particularly memorable moments as a teacher, particular students, particular classes or anything over the course of your career that just immediately come to mind?

AU: Well, interestingly, one of my best memories from teaching wasn't a math class. Grant High School let me teach two years of creative writing. And in that class, we put out a school literary magazine two years in a row. So that was really, really enjoyable. Now as far as my regular classes, they were good kids. I got the whole spectrum of kids. I got the kids who couldn't pass the state basic tests, all the way to the kids that are going to be taking calculus as twelfth graders, the advanced kids. So I enjoyed having that diversity among kids. And I would occasionally then incorporate poetry in some of my assignments. Like with Algebra II and Geometry and Trig, I might give them, tell them to write a math poem. Write a math poem that uses some of the terminology of the class. And you'd be surprised at what kids come up with, very creative.

BN: What kind of teacher were you in terms of, on kind of the scale of disciplinarian, strict versus more lenient, easygoing?

AU: I was strict. [Laughs] And I think, in a way, I had to be, because you figure, I'm a small woman, and we would get classes of forty kids in the class. And the discipline problems are just, the potential is huge. So I found that, for me to survive, I had to be strict. I hope they didn't think I was mean, but I was strict. And I know through the grapevine, I heard over the years the kids would say, "She's strict but she's fair, and she knows how to explain things." So I was okay with that reputation. [Laughs]

BN: Are there students that you've kept up with?

AU: Not too many. It's interesting, the one that I've kept up with the most was from the creative writing class, so I guess that kind of makes sense. She was the editor of the literary magazine for two years.