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The Good Lessons: A Teaching Life with Gangs, Delinquents and Troubled Teens
"A necessary read for anyone serious about personal transformation and peace in our communities."
Luis Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and author of "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A."
A provocative, inspiring, and highly original take on the education and healing of troubled, alienated and gang involved youth. These are beautiful, harrowing stories of transformation as both a high-crime urban and a reservation Indian community decide to throw out convention and rethink what it means, and what it takes, to raise their most alienated and difficult children.
Raised in East Los Angeles and also a professional musician, Hernandez-Sametier has been a teacher, counselor and principal in some of the most difficult urban and rural school environments across the U.S. and Indian Country. He recently served as a therapist for high-trauma, unaccompanied minors detained by U.S. immigration. In 2006, he was honored as the "national educator of the year" by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.
Luis Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and author of "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A."
A provocative, inspiring, and highly original take on the education and healing of troubled, alienated and gang involved youth. These are beautiful, harrowing stories of transformation as both a high-crime urban and a reservation Indian community decide to throw out convention and rethink what it means, and what it takes, to raise their most alienated and difficult children.
Raised in East Los Angeles and also a professional musician, Hernandez-Sametier has been a teacher, counselor and principal in some of the most difficult urban and rural school environments across the U.S. and Indian Country. He recently served as a therapist for high-trauma, unaccompanied minors detained by U.S. immigration. In 2006, he was honored as the "national educator of the year" by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education.
151 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2020
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About the author
Arturo Hernandez-Sametier
4 books1 followerWhen my father bought the oldest laundry in Los Angeles, it came with a scrappy old man. He was an ex-monk and ex-merchant marine without family. He’d been sleeping behind the dryers since 1952. We kept him and the same machines for another twenty years. I grew up in East L.A., my head stuck in the back of ancient GE washers, fighting with frozen bolts and listening to Little Joe's stories.
The Monte Vista Arms, a massive tenement across the street, kept my father busy making crosses out of old machine parts. He would tie them to pipes along the alley anytime another gang member from the Arms died on our premises. The last I remember was a kid named Huero. His parents sold tamales from a barrel on the corner. They draped him over our fence the day they cut him up.
Teaching in Tough Places begins at the height of the violent gang era with the story of a one-room school for the Clanton and First Flat's gangs of South-Central Los Angeles – I won a grant to found it when I was 20, still a kid and with little fear. Everyone immediately came by to help: nuns to cops to management at KFC. The universe supports crazy, heartfelt dreams.
The success of that one-room schoolhouse led to work with troubled kids in South Boston, Compton, Phoenix, isolated mining towns, and farming communities. The book ends with the story of a radical change by a determined tribal community dealing with Pima and Apache delinquent youth. Kids changed as the tribe reinvented schooling, especially for their most vulnerable, delinquent, and alienated youth.
“Shelter: Notes from a Detained Migrant Children’s facility” springs from the last few years, where I have been the therapist for migrant kids separated from their parents. I felt the need to share a story that, due to Homeland Security rules, had never been told. It is the only inside account of life within our immigration shelters for unaccompanied minors. My hope is that the story of these children, before and during ICE detention, will inform a kinder, more nuanced view of who they are.
I have also been blessed as a parent, storyteller, and musician. The musical with my brother (actor Marco Hernandez) was a blast and won awards. I have twin daughters who are life itself, and while they were growing up, I bought an Ice Cream truck when they needed their dad to be home. My kids and I sold ice cream after-school, and sometimes during, and we were the best damned Ice Cream Truck in Phoenix.
I have one novel in print.
The Music of Jimmy Ojotriste was an intense labor of several years and born of an admiration for a glass-eyed orphan who used to serenade along East L.A.'s restaurant boulevards. I was also a street musician, and with each interaction I had with this child, a story brewed a little warmer and further in my imagination. Like many authors, I write stories that I want to read: For myself, these are tales imbued with the warmth, humor, and subtle magic that have permeated my experience. The Music of Jimmy Ojotrsite has been compared to the magic realism of Allende and Marquez. It is a love letter to a glass-eyed child, and to brujos, abuelas, music, love, locuras, and illusiones.
It is now 2025, and I write, create, nurture, and teach. I am working in Phoenix on a design for portable, inexpensive ultra-tiny homes to save people from sleeping on our 160-degree summer sidewalks. I dream of opening a different kind of charter school, where kids come before curriculum. In 2006, I was honored as the national Educator-of-the-Year by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Supporters have expressed hope that my ideas about education can still find realization. There is much to do.
The Monte Vista Arms, a massive tenement across the street, kept my father busy making crosses out of old machine parts. He would tie them to pipes along the alley anytime another gang member from the Arms died on our premises. The last I remember was a kid named Huero. His parents sold tamales from a barrel on the corner. They draped him over our fence the day they cut him up.
Teaching in Tough Places begins at the height of the violent gang era with the story of a one-room school for the Clanton and First Flat's gangs of South-Central Los Angeles – I won a grant to found it when I was 20, still a kid and with little fear. Everyone immediately came by to help: nuns to cops to management at KFC. The universe supports crazy, heartfelt dreams.
The success of that one-room schoolhouse led to work with troubled kids in South Boston, Compton, Phoenix, isolated mining towns, and farming communities. The book ends with the story of a radical change by a determined tribal community dealing with Pima and Apache delinquent youth. Kids changed as the tribe reinvented schooling, especially for their most vulnerable, delinquent, and alienated youth.
“Shelter: Notes from a Detained Migrant Children’s facility” springs from the last few years, where I have been the therapist for migrant kids separated from their parents. I felt the need to share a story that, due to Homeland Security rules, had never been told. It is the only inside account of life within our immigration shelters for unaccompanied minors. My hope is that the story of these children, before and during ICE detention, will inform a kinder, more nuanced view of who they are.
I have also been blessed as a parent, storyteller, and musician. The musical with my brother (actor Marco Hernandez) was a blast and won awards. I have twin daughters who are life itself, and while they were growing up, I bought an Ice Cream truck when they needed their dad to be home. My kids and I sold ice cream after-school, and sometimes during, and we were the best damned Ice Cream Truck in Phoenix.
I have one novel in print.
The Music of Jimmy Ojotriste was an intense labor of several years and born of an admiration for a glass-eyed orphan who used to serenade along East L.A.'s restaurant boulevards. I was also a street musician, and with each interaction I had with this child, a story brewed a little warmer and further in my imagination. Like many authors, I write stories that I want to read: For myself, these are tales imbued with the warmth, humor, and subtle magic that have permeated my experience. The Music of Jimmy Ojotrsite has been compared to the magic realism of Allende and Marquez. It is a love letter to a glass-eyed child, and to brujos, abuelas, music, love, locuras, and illusiones.
It is now 2025, and I write, create, nurture, and teach. I am working in Phoenix on a design for portable, inexpensive ultra-tiny homes to save people from sleeping on our 160-degree summer sidewalks. I dream of opening a different kind of charter school, where kids come before curriculum. In 2006, I was honored as the national Educator-of-the-Year by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education. Supporters have expressed hope that my ideas about education can still find realization. There is much to do.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 5, 2020
Important reading
The 1st part of the book describes the Despair and futility of trying to help problem children through government or charitable 'programs'. My foster son went through many such programs when he went back to his mother and he was always pronounced cured but he never was. What it took was my constant and unfailing involvement in his life well into his adulthood. In the same way there has to be the personal commitment from the helping person, 100%And extremely difficult come hit me commitment . The last two parts of the book describe how this actually works in reality, not all he time, but often enough to make it worthwhile. If everybody knew and practiced this we would have far fewer problem kids in jail and fewer adults as well.
The 1st part of the book describes the Despair and futility of trying to help problem children through government or charitable 'programs'. My foster son went through many such programs when he went back to his mother and he was always pronounced cured but he never was. What it took was my constant and unfailing involvement in his life well into his adulthood. In the same way there has to be the personal commitment from the helping person, 100%And extremely difficult come hit me commitment . The last two parts of the book describe how this actually works in reality, not all he time, but often enough to make it worthwhile. If everybody knew and practiced this we would have far fewer problem kids in jail and fewer adults as well.
Displaying 1 of 1 review