<Begin Segment 23>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

GN: Well, after that, I was a mother, and then I had two more children. I had Linda, then there was four years, and then I had Daniel. And then Joel, there was twenty-two months between (Daniel) and (Joel). So I was pretty busy taking care of the family. And when Joel was in the fourth grade, or was he older than that? (Yes), I guess he was older than that. Joel was in about the fourth or fifth grade. I was gardening out in the front yard, pulling weeds, and this man came down the street and was walking his dog. He was very friendly to us, he (lived) over on the next street and his daughter used to come and babysit. But I had never met her father. His daughter (played) and played folk songs. (Daniel said he wanted) to learn how to play the guitar. Linda was taking piano lessons from a professional, and she said, "Oh, he's going to learn guitar. He (should learn) classical guitar, not some of this old folk music stuff." So anyway, we got him a teacher and he studied classical guitar and he's very good at it. I said, "I'm always interested in meeting our babysitter's dad." So I said, "What do you do?" Started my FBI stuff. And he said, well, he's one of the superintendents up in the Roland District. I said, "How interesting." I said, "I used to be a teacher a long time ago." "Really?" he said. "Well, what can you teach?" I said, "Well, I can teach them almost anything. I'm credentialed to teach almost anything. I have a generalized credential and I have a specialized credential. I can teach anything from kindergarten through twelfth grade." He said, "Well, what I have to offer you right now, it's an experimental school, and I think you might like it." He said, "It's a health class. Have you ever taught health?" I said, "I used to teach health and PE at this little school that I used to teach in Pasadena. I taught all the health ed. and PE to the kids, and I guess I could teach health."

So I became the specialist for that school. It was a middle school, and it had a very fantastic principal. The principal makes the school. His name was Philip Fallon and he came from Massachusetts. And it was an integrated curriculum, and I had every kid in the school. They were on a modular system, sometimes they might come two days, they might come three days. They were on different teams, and from the different grade levels. And we'd have a conference period with all the teachers, the teachers that English, the teachers that taught social studies, etcetera. And so when I was teaching about drug prevention or smoking and all that kind of business, deleterious to your health, then the typing teacher would be teaching them how you could write a little essay on that, footnotes and all the kind of research they would have to do. The English teacher was working on it from English. Well, that's the way I think. That's the way I've always taught, complete integration. The art teacher was working on art projects they could work on, and always give your suggestions to the kids. And that's the way the University of Redlands was, an integrated approach like that. And that's the way our whole family thinks, along those lines. They try to integrate everything and try to have integrated lives, too. And so it was very exciting, and the kids did extremely well at that school. It became one of the top schools in the nation.

And then we had a psychologist in the school, and I have a sociology background so I was very interested. We would have these kids from all these different teams come together for discussion groups with the psychologists and we talked about different topics. And one of the topics I still remember was: "Why do kids want to run away from home?" Because there was a lot of running away from home. That was a pretty upscale neighborhood, had all kinds of homes. There was a large Samoan population. None of the Samoan kids, it never entered their minds that they would want to run away from home. Well, in the Samoan culture, and I read (Coming of Age) in Samoa, Margaret Mead's books, they have a huge extended family. They had disagreement with mom or pop, they could go to uncle or aunt or grandma, anyplace, and they would be taken in and be part of the family. They had never had that problem. And it was just really interesting to see how these kids would think. They were interested in finding out about these other kids.

SY: So it was very cultural-based, then, too.

GN: Oh, yes, it was very exciting...

SY: Time in your teaching.

GN: And I probably would have continued to stay there. I'm still impressed with a lot of those people at that school.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.