FOR PAUL WHITE , a Christian Scientist who lives near Los Angeles, California, teaching is a calling, not just a profession. When he became part of a school district whose alternative high schools were allowing difficult and disruptive pupils to watch television instead of studying and engaging in classroom work, he and another teacher began to look for alternatives. The result is West Valley Leadership Academy, a public, community day school, located in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles. It's a high-school program for students for whom the traditional system hasn't worked.

Paul recently spoke with the Sentinel's Rosalie E. Dunbar about the school, the kids, and his prayerful approach to education.

Paul, what types of students attend West Valley Leadership Academy?

Our students are kids who were just not being reached by the traditional high-school model. Some had stopped going to school for months or even years. Others had problems brought on by drug or alcohol abuse. Some had been expelled for fighting or bringing weapons to school, or had been incarcerated for crimes related to gang involvement.

This is a public school, not a specially funded private institution?

That's right. To be honest, I feel that everything you see at our school should be the norm at all public schools. Our kids voluntarily test 100 percent clean for drugs. We have 100 percent parental participation in monthly meetings, and our graduation rate is 20 percent higher than traditional local schools. The number of fights gang problems, vandalism, and racial incidents is virtually zero.

How does the program work?

I have a self-contained class, which means I teach my students everything—reading, writing, grammar, earth and biological sciences, history, economics, math. I need to add that the most important subject I teach, and one that is infused throughout our entire curriculum, is a strong sense of morals, values, and selfless service to others in our community. Our students don't just learn how to stay alive, so to speak, but come to understand what they're living for—to be contributors to making our world a better place.

What role does prayer play in all this?

I never come into school—never one day—without praying to know that its true spiritual purpose is to glorify the presence of God as expressed in love, intelligence, harmony; and to know my own role in bearing witness to this fact. I won't accept anything less as a part of this school or these children. My real job here isn't fixing broken lives, no matter how convincing the situation appears to be, but awakening the children to their present purity, perfection, intelligence, and freedom from fear or lack. I do this by recognizing that as children of God, each one is in fact spiritual, limitless.

In proportion as I hold to that God-inspired view, sooner or later every child I come into contact with responds, and in varying degrees awakens from their previous sense of poor behavior, learning difficulties, drug addiction, or other trouble. And incredible things happen. We're required, as you know, to test the kids all the time. And the student who holds our school record for academic improvement is one who made seven years of academic growth in reading in a 12-months period. It was recorded on an objective standardized test.

This was a boy who had come to us from Mexico City, with almost no English—and went from a second to a ninth-grade reading level within 12 months. It seems unbelievable, but we've had many comparable examples of growth and character regeneration as we an atmosphere that is supportive of this spiritual awakening.

How do the students interpret such dramatic changes?

That's just what I asked them about this student's progress. I said, "How do we explain this? We know it's a fact both from the test and how he reads. I'd like to think it's because I'm that good a teacher, and I put a big funnel up in his ear, and poured it in. But," I said, "I don't think that's the case." And you know kids—they said, "You're right, Mr. White. You're not that good."

So I said, "Well, then, how do we explain it? if I didn't pour it in from outside, how did it happen?" And it was real quiet for a moment, and then one of the students said, "Well, maybe it was in him already?" Isn't that beautiful?

Do the parents play a part in the school's work?

I give the parents and the kids my phone numbers, so they can reach me 24 hours a day. I ask them to contact me at any time to share good news or to receive comfort regarding bad news, and I've almost never had a single child abuse this privilege. I also ask that parents tell me if their child is being abusive or disrespectful with them. When the families sign in, we require that the parent agree to come once a month to a one-hour meeting. And 100 percent of them do.

Most of our parents are single and are struggling economically to survive, so we do all that we can to support them. Over the years, I've had parents come in and sit in on the classes to brush up their own skills. We always offer child care at the night meetings. On a few occasions, a situation has arisen where a parent had an emergency, and our student would have had to stay home and miss school to babysit a younger sibling. In those instances, I just had our student bring the younger sibling to school, and we provided child care so the older child wouldn't lose a day of learning.

So then how do you deal with violence?

Over the years, I've been assaulted by students a number of times, because many of our students come to us with past records of multiple violent felonies and heavy gang involvement. Early in the program, I had to forcibly remove some students from the building. But as the years have gone on, the school's reputation has become established, the culture of obedience and respect has strengthened, and my understanding has increased, too. Now, violent confrontations are very few and far between.

I would also add that there are about 50 schools like this one in Los Angeles County. Almost all of them search the kids and use metal detectors every day before they let them in the door. We don't do any of that. I've searched our kids this way maybe three times in the past six years. People will say, "Don't you care about your security?" I reply, "Oh, yes, we greatly believe in security" But the greatest security I have is knowing the children at a deep, spiritual level, having a strong interpersonal relationship with them, and having a school that has integrity, moral courage, and honesty as its foundation. The unspoken part of our security policy is my own prayers every day—knowing absolutely who our kids and other members of our community are as God's spiritual children, and that no power or presence opposed to the divine can enter here. And then of course you must follow up this prayer by humanly standing up for what is right when any incidents occur during the day.

How do you deal with fear?

I pray every morning of my life, and am strengthened daily by the truths of the Bible and Science and Health. For example, consider the inspiring thought from the Bible, "Perfect love casteth out fear" (I John 4:18). It reminds me that I'm not here at school for myself. I'm here to help these children. I'm here to love them in whatever way is necessary—to do whatever is required to meet their needs. If you have any hope at all of having a healing effect on today's challenges, you have to move beyond your own feelings—beyond worrying about what might happen to you. At times when situations at school or in the community have seemed quite scary—and they have—I have always taken comfort in reminding myself that Daniel wasn't saved from the lions' den, he was saved in the lions' den. To me, my job is a God-directed task, and so it is also God-protected. The guiding question is always the same: "What's the right thing to do?" And I define "right thing" by following Christ Jesus' example.

It sounds as though you don't give up on people.

Never. Never. I always tell them: "My job isn't to save you. My job is to love you, to show you who you really are, and help you prove this inasmuch as you're willing to allow me to do that." And I always tell them, "It's a joint effort. The successes you achieve in school are both yours and mine—and so are the failures. I don't get up at 4:00 in the morning and drive an hour to get here and fail. And you don't come here to fail either." So it becomes a team effort: the student loved and supported by both me and their parents, and responding to that love.

How can prayer help to improve the schools overall?

Prayer first gives us a general spiritual conviction that the present educational challenges and limitations are not the insurmountable problems they appear to be, and that intelligent solutions are possible. Second, prayer inspires us with specific, practical understanding and ideas for how we can go about proving this. Mary Baker Eddy explained this when she wrote, "The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously ..." (Science and Health, p. 504). So the rays of Truth (our understanding of God's presence) help to show us that it is God's allness, goodness, and infinite presence that is here right now—and nothing else.

That prayer includes the thought that there's one divine Mind, all of whose ideas are whole and perfect. There's one law—of God, good, governing this situation. There's one uninterrupted sense of Life and activity. There's no stagnation in trying to get things done. So when you take these truths and you focus on them in prayer as they relate to your school, for example, that means that nothing good going on at the school can be delayed. No arbitrary procedures can interrupt the activity of divine Principle, which is also Love, and so on. This kind of prayer will bring change in whatever situation you are facing—often much more quickly than you expect.

But transforming schools is more than just mouthing words. You have to strive to embody the spiritual concepts that I've been talking about.

And how long do you do it? Well, like the children of Israel you keep circling the "walls of Jericho"—what you could interpret as fears and limitations—until they give way to that "ray of Truth," and collapse. That's what you do. Morality—in the sense of integrity and honesty, for example—isn't just a sidebar to education. Academics give a student the requisite skills to function in society, but moral education is what gives those skills meaning and teaches a person their relevance and how to apply them in their lives. Aristotle had it right when he said, "Educating the mind without educating the heart, is no education at all."

It isn't always easy, but when a parent or teacher holds to these ideas, the children sense the depth of your commitment to doing the right thing, and they respond to that. To me, there's no other outcome but good when there's that kind of commitment. css