08/20/04

LC040820

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

A mid-life career switch. This you're ready? So did an actor
who wound up in a room full of fourth graders.

Link Richards>> I've been an actor and a general contractor.
That's what was on my resume. I thought this is -- they're not
going to hire me. Yeah, this is silly. But they were looking
more for, you know, the whole person.

Val>> And then, they know the voice, but most fans have never
seen his face. Meet the voice of the Dodgers and it's not Vin
Scully.

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> California is facing a serious teacher shortage and, with
more students pouring into our crowded classrooms all the time,
it's not likely to ease up. At the same time, there are
thousands of people who have gone down one career path, but
think they might like to give teaching a try. Well, now there
is a way that they can earn their credential without even losing
a day of pay.

I went to Eagle Rock Elementary and met a teacher who has made
the switch. Link Richards arrives at Eagle Rock Elementary
School every morning armed with teaching manuals. This is his
fourth year teaching fourth grade.

Link Richards>> I had always thought in the back of my mind
that it might be something that I would want to do. I mean,
when I think back on my childhood in the time that I was most
happy, it was eight, nine, ten, third, fourth grade, like that
time period.

Val>> But the route he took to get here was anything but
direct. At college, Link majored in theater arts and headed to
New York and worked on Broadway. Later he and his wife returned
to Los Angeles where he continued to act. This is Link in a
bank commercial.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Between auditions, he remodeled kitchens and baths using
skills he learned from his father. But over time, he found that
trying to do both jobs was frustrating.

Link Richards>> I remember specifically that I was doing a job
in Pasadena remodeling a kitchen and I had, I think, my third
call-back for "Lois and Clark", so this is going back a few
years, for an episode. I had this kitchen pulled apart and I
met with the director and I thought, if I get this, what am I
going to tell these people? You know, oh, I've been auditioning
and I'm sorry, but your kitchen is going to be like this for
three weeks while I'm off doing this.

Val>> So he quit acting, became a contractor full-time and ran
a successful business for five years.

Link Richards>> Then probably the big push into the teaching
was that I wasn't happy doing that, and we had a son. He was
getting to an age where he was going to start school and I
wanted to know more about the whole process of education because
I couldn't remember. How do we learn, you know? What are the
steps to learn?

Val>> So he made a call to his alma mater, Occidental College.

Link Richards>> It was meant to be. I mean, I called over to
Occidental one morning, I think, in May and said what do you
need to be a teacher? The person in the alumni office said,
well, interesting that you're calling today. We have a
recruiter here from LAUSD from this District Intern Program.
Why don't you come over and talk to him? So I drove over, my
son and I. He was probably two at the time. I went over and
the recruiter said, here, this is what you need to do. Here's
the application. Let's pull your transcript. This is what the
program is about, and I did what needed to be done.

Mary Lewis>> It was originally designed to recruit career
changers. You know, people who always wanted to be a teacher,
but perhaps they couldn't take two years off, you know, just to
get credentialed through the regular means. So in this program,
you have to teach full-time, but you're going to classes once a
week and Saturdays. You have all the rights and privileges,
including the salary, of all other teachers who meet the
requirements of a highly qualified teacher.

Val>> Mary Lewis is with the Teacher Certification Unit of
LAUSD. So you're not giving up pay? You're not like putting
your life on hold for two years financially or otherwise?
You're getting right into a paid teacher's position?

Mary Lewis>> And with all the other benefits, hospitalization,
dental, glasses, all the same as other highly qualified and
probationary candidates.

Link Richards>> "You want to stop every once in a while and
think about what you've just read."

Val>> Getting enough qualified teachers to fill our classrooms
is a big challenge. Last school year, ten percent of
California's teachers, more than thirty thousand, didn't have a
basic credential and studies show the less experienced teachers
are concentrated in the poorer schools, the ones with a higher
portion of minority students. LAUSD realized it couldn't wait
for colleges to produce all the teachers they need, so the
District Intern Program was created.

Link Richards>> "How do you think the doctor, the physician, is
feeling? Elena?"

Val>> Link Richards was given a list of schools looking for
teachers. Eagle Rock Elementary was among them.

Link Richards>> It was my first interview and I came in
thinking, okay, I've been an actor and a general contractor.
That's what was on my resume. I thought they're not going to
hire me. Yeah, this is silly. But they were looking more for,
you know, the whole person and, knowing that I was in the
District Intern Program, they knew those other skills would
come.

Val>> Those other skills came fast. The program begins with an
intense six-week training.

Mary Lewis>> During that six weeks, you get the curriculum in
our district and the state requirements. You have an
opportunity to observe outstanding practitioners. You have
opportunities to teach and you're also required to do a two-week
lesson plan so that you're ready on day one.

Link Richards>> I think a big emphasis is on the discipline
because the big fear is that you're going to show up day one and
how are you going to handle these twenty or thirty or thirty-two
kids without those skills? So really the beginning first few
months of the whole program is focused on having a discipline
program.

Val>> As for concerns about drugs, gangs and violent students -
-

Mary Lewis>> Most of our schools are very safe. I mean, well,
Los Angeles is -- I'm afraid -- something's going to happen --
well, this happened. Perhaps then maybe you need to go to one
of the surrounding districts because we have a commitment to
keep our teachers safe.

Link Richards>> "Did you play with the little kids?"

Link Richards>> The one thing that helped me tremendously is
that you have one week where you're actually out observing a
teacher, so you're in the classroom. The woman that I observed
was a great teacher, so I had a great model and she gave me a
lot of good things.

Val>> Despite the model teacher, Link was still nervous on his
first day.

Link Richards>> I was a little nervous. You know, I was
setting up my classroom, I remember, the first day. I was in a
bungalow and the door was open between my room and the other
teacher's room and she was setting up her classroom. I didn't
know what to do (laughter). I kept looking and saying, okay,
what is she doing now? Oh, I see, she's putting something up on
the wall. Then I'm looking around like what do I put up on the
wall (laughter)?

Val>> He also had a mentor teacher and he found that his
general life experience was a real advantage.

Link Richards>> Right out of college if I'd started this, I
don't think I'd be teaching now. You know, I don't think I had
the life skills.

Mary Lewis>> Everyone can't do this. You know, it takes
special individuals who are willing to make that commitment and
there is a rigorous selection process.

Val>> Once a week, Link and his students go over to the
auditorium for a dance class.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Link is now as sure-footed in class as he is onstage.

Link Richards>> It's the best. It's the greatest thing that I
could come to class today, teach a little, hear about their
weekend, go to a dance class, come back, you know, we're working
on a musical, introduce electricity to them, and have them right
there, you know, just wanting more.

Val>> Six thousand teachers have been trained in the District
Intern Program since it started in 2002 and LAUSD's teacher
shortage has eased. Mary says it could be a model for other
districts.

Mary Lewis>> I'm not Pollyannaish, but I feel that it's a
positive trend in L.A. Unified and I see us really making a
difference with our kids and bringing positive attention to L.A.
Unified across the nation. I really do. I only see us going
up.

Val>> And so are test scores at Eagle Rock Elementary. They're
up for the past five years and all of the teachers at this
mostly Latino and Filipino school are credentialed. It's also
been nominated for a prestigious national blue ribbon award. As
for Link Richards, if things keep going as they are, teaching
will be his third and last career.

Link Richards>> It's funny. When I first started teaching, I
would come home and tell stories about my kids at night. My son
would be like, wait a minute, I'm your kid. I'm the only kid,
right? We would laugh about it because you just form that bond.
They are my kids.

Link Richards>> "All right, guys. Enough whistling, please."

Val>> The need for high school math and science teachers is
especially acute as is the need for Special Ed teachers. The
good news is that the LAUSD District Intern Program offers
credentials in those specialties as well.

[Film Clip]

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Val>> It doesn't take an oil industry newsletter to tell you
that gas prices have reached record highs in California this
year. Experts say it's a simple matter of high demand and low
supplies. Unfortunately, the long-term picture isn't very
pretty. Experts say our oil supplies have reached their peak
and it's all downhill from here. Among them is Caltech Physics
Professor David Goodstein who says a crisis is inevitable. He's
written a book called "Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil".
He talked with Saul Gonzalez about the laws of nature that can't
be avoided.

Saul Gonzalez>> Our civilization obviously runs on oil,
Professor, but you argue in your book that we're far closer to
the end of the petroleum age than most of us might think.
Explain.

David Goodstein>> Well, in the history of any mineral resource,
the supply starts at zero. It climbs to a maximum, to a peak,
and then it declines forever after that. The point where we get
into trouble is not when you pump the last drop of oil. It's
when you reach the peak because that's when the supply starts
falling behind the need, the demand for it. That means, crudely
speaking, that you're in trouble when you use up about half the
oil that nature made for you and that alone will put us much
closer to the crisis than most people would believe.

Saul Gonzalez>> Are we there yet? Have we used half of the
supply?

David Goldstein>> It's possible. It will be a while before we
really know. There was a story in the New York Times a couple
of weeks ago saying that Saudi Arabia had peaked. I've always
thought that would be the signal of the worldwide peak because
Saudi Arabia has used its excess pumping capacity to control
world oil levels for decades. So if Saudi Arabia has peaked,
that might be the signal that it's happened.

Saul Gonzalez>> What exactly happens once we reach that peak
and we start down the other end?

David Goldstein>> Well, anybody who was alive in 1973 knows
what happens because we had a dry run then. The United States
supplies had by then peaked and the Arabs took advantage of
that. The OPEC countries took advantage of that by embargoing
oil and we immediately had mile-long lines at the gas stations
and panic and despair for the future of our way of life, to say
nothing of the four times increase in the price of gasoline.

Saul Gonzalez>> How much time do you think we have left?

David Goldstein>> I can't answer that question because the
numbers on which these predictions are based are much too
uncertain. They're based on what are called proven oil reserves
which are numbers basically invented, made up by various
countries around the world, heavily influenced by economic and
political considerations. They're not terribly believable. As
I said earlier, it may have already started or it may not happen
until later in this decade or it may not even begin to happen
until the next decade, but it's hard to imagine pushing it off
much further than that. After all, ten years on the scale of
human history really is nothing.

Saul Gonzalez>> Certainly you see by the middle of the twenty-
first century, we're knee-deep in this crisis?

David Goldstein>> Oh, yeah, certainly.

Saul Gonzalez>> What does this world look like in another fifty
to a hundred years? Worst case scenario.

David Goldstein>> Not only will gasoline cost more, but all
petrol chemical products and it's more than any of us realize.
Anything that has to be transported will cost more, so there
will be an economic crisis. In the worst case, we won't be able
to fill in with other fossil fuels fast enough to keep the
civilization that we know going. The civilization will start to
deteriorate. People will be forced to burn coal for warmth, for
house heating and cooking and for primitive industry. Burning
all that coal could put enough carbon dioxide into the climate
to change the climate into one that we can't live in. Then
that's the end of the story. That's the worst case. The worst
case really is worst case.

Saul Gonzalez>> Are we prepared to meet this challenge? Are
there any leaders out there who are looking that far out ahead?

David Goldstein>> No. Have you heard any of the politicians
campaigning in this year's race even mentioning this problem?
No, we're not prepared.

Saul Gonzalez>> So what do we do? What are some of the
solutions? What do you say to those, first off, who say you're
being too pessimistic, too dark, too bleak? That there are
oceans of oil to be found out there and exploited, be it in the
South China Sea, be it in Northern Alaska, be it on the West
Coast of Africa, and you, sir, will be proven wrong?

David Goldstein>> It's extremely unlikely that any major finds
of oil will occur. There are a few unexplored places, as you
say, the South China Sea, Central Siberia, the deep oceans.
Those are places with big problems of various kinds. It is true
that you can substitute other fossil fuels for the missing oils,
but the sheer magnitude of the problem is overwhelming. We use
twice as much oil as we use coal, for example. So if you wanted
to substitute liquefied coal for oil -- that's physically
possible. It's been done in Germany and South Africa in years
past -- you can do that, but it would mean expanding the
coalmining industry to an almost unimaginable level. It's
extremely inefficient.

You'd have to mine coal at least ten times as fast as it's being
mined now in order to replace the oil with the coal, and coal is
the dirtiest of all fuels. It's all carbon. It means
everything you burn becomes carbon dioxide and goes into the
atmosphere. It comes mixed with arsenic and sulfur and mercury
and other nasty things. You could fill in with other fossil
fuels. It's possible that you can get a little bit more out of
any given oil field. It's called heavy oil, but the more you
get out, the heavier it gets. There are oil sands in Canada
that people talk about, but oil sands are solid deposits. They
have to be mined and the oil is extracted from the sand. So
even though Alberta is doing it profitably now, nevertheless it
comes out slowly enough so it's not a major player in the world
of oil equation.

Saul Gonzalez>> So can we retrofit society to use something
else as a fuel, whatever that something else turns out to be?

David Goldstein>> It's a huge problem. For example, our
president and our governor here in California have both embraced
the idea of a hydrogen economy car. Hydrogen today is made from
fossil fuel. Hydrogen is not a source of energy. It's just a
way of transferring energy from one thing to another. So you
can turn fossil fuel, which is coal or oil or methane, into
hydrogen. It's inefficient. You lose a lot of the energy in
doing that. In fact, the technology today is such that it takes
the equivalent of six gallons of gasoline to make enough
hydrogen to replace one gallon of gasoline. So what our
president and our governor have chosen to do is not a big
winner, at least not in the short run.

Saul Gonzalez>> Knowing what you know or knowing what you've
studied, do you remain optimistic or are you pretty bleak about
the future?

David Goldstein>> I hope that when the crisis comes -- and
there will be a crisis. It will come -- it will serve as a
wakeup call, that we'll be able to get alternatives into action
fast enough to keep things going so that we keep muddling along
as best we can, that is, natural gas-based or other fossil fuels
and so on, so we can get the nuclear industry going again and we
can start building large efficient plants to make use of solar
power and perhaps even solve the nuclear fusion problem which
would really solve the problem because then there would be a
virtually endless supply of energy.

Saul Gonzalez>> And we're talking really about a national and a
global challenge as great as fighting the Nazis?

David Goldstein>> Yes, yes. I simply don't think that we can
depend on our leadership to be imaginative enough and courageous
enough to lead us now while we still have fossil fuel into the
non-fossil fuel economy that we will have to learn how to do.

Saul Gonzalez>> Well, Professor, on that note, I will think
about you the next time and every time I go to my local filling
station and fill up my tank. Thank you very much for joining us
on Life and Times.

David Goldstein>> Well, thank you for having me.

Val>> I have just one word to say: hybrids.

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Val>> He's a Dodger great you may never have heard, but to
millions of Spanish-speaking fans, Jaime Jarrin is the voice of
the Dodgers. In 1998, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of
Fame and we thought baseball season would be a good time to
reach into the Life and Times Vault and bring you this profile
by Kitty Felde of Dodger broadcaster, Jaime Jarrin.

Kitty Felde>> The tradition of baseball is as much about voices
as it is about players; the late Mel Allen; the great Vin
Scully. But for an ever-growing number of Dodger fans, this is
the voice of the Dodgers.

[Film Clip]

Kitty Felde>> Some call Jaime Jarrin him the Spanish-language
Vin Scully. Jarrin has his own unique way of describing a ball
game. For example, a batter caught looking at strike three is a
man left standing with his rifle on his shoulder.

Jaime Jarrin>> There are some English statements that don't
have a translation like strike. Strike is a strike. A bullpen
is a bullpen, a balk is a balk. Then, of course, we have our
own words like first base, for short stop. You know the
outfielders are called gardeners in Spanish, (Spanish). A left
fielder is (Spanish). (Spanish) is a center fielder, (Spanish)
is a right fielder.

Kitty Felde>> Jaime Jarrin grew up in Equator. He dreamed of
becoming an airline pilot, but then his brother, a well-known
radio announcer in Qito, brought him down to the station one day
and the broadcasting bug bit. Jarrin was initially a news man
but fancied himself something of a sportsman, playing soccer,
basketball, even running some track, but never baseball.

Jaime Jarrin>> Baseball was totally strange to me. I had never
seen a baseball game in my life before coming to this country.
I remember vividly watching the 1955 World Series on TV and I
saw these groups of people watching the games and said, gee,
that must be a very nice sport.

Kitty Felde>> 1955 was the year the Brooklyn Dodgers won their
first and only World Series. It was also the year the bilingual
Jarrin immigrated to Los Angeles. Jarrin quickly found work at
Los Angeles's only Spanish-language radio station in those days,
KWKW. He became the station's news and sports director and
then, in 1958, the Dodgers moved west.

Jaime Jarrin>> And then one day the owner and general manager
of the station, William Beaton, came to the station. He called
all the announcers to his office to give us the great news that
he had signed a contract to do Dodger games in Spanish and he
wanted two announcers, so he asked me to do it. It's a funny
thing that I never asked for this job. He said, "I want you to
do the baseball games." I said, "I'm sorry, I don't know
nothing about baseball. I don't know very much about baseball."
But he liked me very much.

Kitty Felde>> William Beaton gave Jarrin one year to get ready.
So he watched every game, read every book about baseball and, in
1959, he started broadcasting Dodger games. In those early
days, home games were broadcast live from the Coliseum, but when
the team went on the road, the Spanish-language broadcaster
stayed home. Jarrin still broadcasted the games, but he sat
home in a studio simultaneously translating Vin Scully's English
language broadcast.

Vin Scully>> In the early days when he would stay home and
listen to me or my wonderful partner, Jerry Doggett, and he
would hear us in English and somehow translate it right into
Spanish baseball, I used to marvel at that. I used to tell him
I don't know how in the world your mind can work that quickly.
So I know that since he has been so successful as a Spanish
broadcaster and since he had the ability to take whatever I was
blabbering about and make it into good Spanish, he has to be
outstanding.

Kitty Felde>> Scully is one of Jarrin's biggest fans and one of
the members of the Hall of Fame committee that voted to give
Jarrin this year's Ford C. Frick Award honoring one outstanding
sportscaster. He will become the third Dodger broadcaster
inducted into the Hall of Fame, joining Vin Scully and Red
Barber.

Jaime Jarrin>> To us, in my industry and in my profession, this
is like getting the Nobel Prize. There is nothing, nothing more
after this.

Kitty Felde>> The Ford C. Frick Award is an acknowledgement
from Jaime Jarrin's peers that he's been delivering a Hall of
Fame caliber broadcast. Now the fans have their own way of
expressing Jaime Jarrin's achievement.

Fan>> He's a very good companion. Sports especially. He gives
us news about everything that's happening. News about baseball,
playoffs, about everything.

Fan>> You don't have to be watching the game. You can
visualize it in your mind just by listening to Jaime Jarrin.

Fan>> He lets the Spanish-speaking public get involved. Like
my mother, for example, she doesn't speak English, so she can
watch. So what she does is she listens and watches. Lowers the
volume and listens to him.

Fan>> He puts a lot of excitement into baseball, more than
other people would, like other broadcasters. I like him.

Kitty Felde>> Jarrin says he has a special responsibility to
Latino fans.

Jaime Jarrin>> It seems I am doing the games in Spanish. I
know that my viewing audience or my listeners are very desperate
to get something about a certain ballplayer from Latin America.

[Film Clip]

Kitty Felde>> When Jarrin makes his acceptance speech at
Cooperstown, it will be both in English and Spanish.

Jaime Jarrin>> Since I am getting into the Hall of Fame
speaking Spanish, the least I can do will be to use my beautiful
language.

[Film Clip

Kitty Felde>> Jarrin has become something of an iron man of
broadcasting, calling more than 3,600 consecutive games, before
taking time off in 1984 to supervise radio coverage of the
Olympics. He says he has to no plans to retire. I'm Kitty
Felde for Life and Times.

Val>> Since that story first aired, Jaime Jarrin has put in
another six years broadcasting for the Dodgers. That makes a
total of forty-six years at the mike. And that's our program.
I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, a battle of survival is
taking place off Southern California's shore and at stake is the
future of a tiny animal that's become an unfortunate part of
nature's food chain.

>> Right now, Golden Eagles are our worry, but there are other
things that could happen out there as well. So that's why it
will require constant vigilance on our part.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.