BIG DREAMS AT METRO HIGH

That admonishing voice in her head, the one she heard so many times in her childhood: Nobody cares what you think. You are not worthy of love or attention. You will never amount to anything. You are not pretty. Or the cruel echoes of the guilt thrust upon her fragile soul: If only you were a better sister, a better daughter, a better student. You slut. It is all your fault.

Even when she managed to silence those voices, to pretend this upbringing was normal, there was still her self-image to contend with. One, two, three times an hour, she surveyed every centimeter of her pale skin, the shape of her green eyes, her nose, the arch of her brows. Anything this big mirror could capture, or that smaller one could confirm, or the way this thicker one magnified each and every one of her defects.

Who is Guadalupe Vasquez now?

An 18-year-old high school junior who no longer needs to carry three mirrors in her purse, who can say she is beautiful in front of a crowd and who dreams of being a nutritionist, wife and mother. “Lupe” is now on her own and away from the source of her childhood trauma. But she still needs her afternoons sitting alone at Union Station, her favorite place for solace; amid the roaring of the trains, Lupe retreats and meditates. Her broken heart can forgive, and her tattered spirit can heal, she has learned in a one-of-a-kind class--a weekly support session for adolescent girls who have lost their way in L.A.’s gritty streets.

There are many Lupes in Los Angeles schools. Often, they live in poor neighborhoods, come from broken families and have a history of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. More and more, they embrace motherhood or are criminal defendants before they are adults. They are often addicted to drugs and alcohol and fulfill their need for acceptance by joining street gangs. In the city’s furious pace, they are hardly noticed.

But not at Metropolitan High School. In the heart of downtown’s Skid Row, the adults in Los Angeles’ largest continuation school are paying attention. For many teenagers, alternative high schools are the last resort for repairing their troubled lives, earning a diploma and finding some direction. Metro, as it is called, serves as a safe haven for Lupe and her peers.

Classes here are structured around individual student-teacher contracts instead of standardized lesson plans. Students work at their own pace until they earn enough credits for graduation and are assisted in finding part-time jobs and counseling.

Last fall, school officials collaborated with the Los Angeles City Commission on the Status of Women to begin a program that aims to build self-esteem, broaden minds and elevate expectations in teenage girls. Already in place at Duke Ellington High School in south Los Angeles (75 girls have gone through it), the program was created when juvenile court officials became concerned about the increasing number of girls in the system.

“We started talking to people in the community and realized there are prevention programs out there, but none like this,” says Paula Petrotta, the commission’s executive director. “Having been a rape counselor, and through my work with domestic-violence policy, I know that if you feel good about yourself, if you feel that no one has power or control over you, you tend to make better choices.”

On paper, the guidelines for the Young Women at Risk program sound like improbable psychobabble: teach a young girl to love herself, and she will learn to succeed. Week after week, Lupe and the others were inculcated with messages of acceptance and strength, and gradually--sometimes painfully--their lives began to take new shape, new direction. Now look into Lupe’s eyes and see that something has changed, something intangible, beyond scientific measure.

Sept. 19, 2000

Meet Lupe the first day Letty Herndon and Toni Perez walked into Metro and introduced the girls to the concept of self-esteem. Herndon, who owns Life Skills Connection, a motivational company that inspires people to better manage their lives, and Perez, a consultant, were hired by the women’s commission to mentor the girls. With moderator Nancy DePaolo, assistant principal in charge of counseling services, the women serve as teachers, therapists and role models.

“Girls, when they are ages 6 to 11, are free spirits,” Herndon says outside class. “They are authentic. By the time they are pre-adolescent, they are confused. Combine that with the fact that these girls are from depressed communities, and the situation is compounded. An individual in a depressed community doesn’t know what they don’t know. They get isolated in their depressed and dysfunctional world. Girls who become victims of their culture stop expressing themselves.”

Lupe, an honors student in the gifted program in junior high, saw her grades drop when she enrolled at Manual Arts High School and life at home became more stressful. Eight months ago, she transferred to Metro, hoping the new setting and pace would help her regain her focus. Now, she’s earning Bs and Cs and is one of 35 girls who take the required class on Tuesdays. (An additional 28 girls attend the class on Thursdays.)

The girls meet in the library, a small room in this tiny campus that has no cafeteria, gym or auditorium. Well-kept and clean, the school is surrounded by asphalt and a barrage of traffic noise from the nearby bus terminal and warehouses. The cramped library, however, is conducive to the intimacy the moderators hope to foster.

“Society imposes a lot of stereotypes on women; it tries to tell us to behave and act in a certain way, a way that keeps us down, inferior and feeling helpless,” Herndon tells the girls. “We’re going to throw all of that negativity in the trash right now. It’s very important that you define who you are early on, that you know and love yourselves.”

To begin, each girl is given a piece of paper with a fill-in-the-blank sentence: “I am (blank), and I am (blank), and I am female.” The first blank is for her name; in the second, she is to compliment herself. “These are like self-hugs, OK? Let’s get into it!” Herndon urges.

Perez roams the room, calling on the girls. Nobody wants to go first. She points to Nancy Reyes, 19. “I am Nancy, and I am wonderful, and I am female,” she says in a low but clear voice. “That’s great!” Perez applauds. “Let’s get some momentum going!” Slowly, others respond. One girl is able to say she is happy today; another announces she is clever. Embarrassed, the rest of the students giggle.

When it is Lupe’s turn, she looks down and does not speak. Perez walks over and touches her on the shoulder, “It’s OK; you can do it.”

Lupe shrugs. Perez glances at her paper and sees it is blank.

“I can’t think of anything,” Lupe mumbles.

“That’s OK,” Perez assures her. “We’re going to do this every week. You’ll get the hang of it.”

On this first day, Lupe is tense and out of sorts. “Why am I going to get up and tell a bunch of people what I think of myself?” the thin, meticulously dressed girl says in private. “I’m just here to get the credits I need. It’s a dumb idea to get out of regular class to do this. Some of the girls are good. They can say what they feel inside. But I don’t like to talk about myself in front of strangers.”

Sept. 26, 2000

Senior Helen Noriega has no idea what is about to happen to her. At 17, Helen is the most poised student in her classroom. Outspoken and articulate, she frequently takes the lead in discussions, expressing strong opinions and offering mature advice.

At Metro, Helen has come a long way. When she enrolled three years ago, she was a member of the Bloods and once sliced a girl’s face with a razor blade. She was kicked out of Taft High School for fighting. Pretty and thin, she now makes mostly A’s and is probably the student who least needs the program. But the sessions benefit from her insights.

“After a while of being in this school, I realized that I was worth more than what I was actually doing,” she says. “I saw friends dying or going to jail over gang stuff. People were being kicked out of school. My mother and everybody tried to change me, but I guess I was finally ready for it now.”

Because of her strength and wisdom, Helen is DePaolo’s pick for the group’s first exercise. Helen sits up front with her back to her peers. DePaolo instructs everyone to find two physical attributes and two personality traits they like about Helen. Her job is to listen attentively and accept the compliments with grace.

“We tend to be more negative about ourselves and about other people than positive,” DePaolo says. “How often do we actually say something positive? Another skill that’s hard to learn is being able to accept something positive that someone says about you. You feel a little embarrassed, instead of just saying thank you. That’s what we’re going to practice.”

For a few minutes, Helen closes her eyes and listens to the onslaught of adjectives: pretty, nice dresser, good complexion, honest, positive, smart.

When it is over, DePaolo asks Helen how she feels: “I’m kind of surprised because I didn’t know people looked at me that way. Most of the girls in here, I’ve never spoken to. I thought maybe people thought I was mean. It felt good to have people say stuff like that. We should do that more often for everybody, to boost them up when they have low self-esteem.”

For the next two weeks, the girls at Metro have an assignment. As they go through their days, they must make an effort to say kind things to one another. Every compliment is rewarded with extra credit points.

Oct. 17, 2000

Today, DePaolo wants to deconstruct the messages the girls get from their parents, their teachers and their peers.

“When you’re little, you believe your parents so completely,” says DePaolo. “We believe anything they say, right? Then teachers also influence how you feel about yourself. If they tell you that you’re a disruption or a bad girl, that sticks, right? We’re bombarded with all kinds of messages, and most of the time they’re negative, right?”

Listen to the voices the girls hear every day.

From a parent: Why can’t you be more like your sister? Eighteen-year-old Isabel Leyva can relate to this one. The youngest of three girls, Isabel is the rebel in the family, the one who ditched school and fought with other girls because she was bored. People tend to mistake the petite and serious senior for a gang member because of her taste for baggy, blue hip-hop clothes. But Isabel insists she’s never been a “gangster,” and she admires her oldest sister, a married schoolteacher, despite having to tolerate constant comparisons to her.

“Each one is her own person,” says Isabel. “I want to be who I am, but in a positive way. I was very negative before. I realize the only person who can change me is me.”

Elizabeth Washington, 16, pipes in. “If I cared about what my momma thought or my daddy thought about me, I wouldn’t be here today. My parents moved from Louisiana and Arkansas to get away from their families. And I’m gonna do the same. I’m gonna get away from California because there’s nothing here but negativity. When I do well and get older, I’m gonna come back and gloat.”

From a teacher: What’s wrong with you? You’re supposed to know that already! Shy and introverted, Lupe became accustomed to hearing this when she was at Manual Arts High. “I like to read and find the answers on my own. I love history. I read it slowly and imagine I’m there. But at that school, they were always rushing us, telling us we were already supposed to be past this or past that. They make you feel stupid.”

From a fellow student: You b----! I’m gonna get you! You think you’re all that! There’s a reason the diminutive Sandra Vega has earned the nickname “Lil’ Boxer.” In junior high, she was beaten so badly because of her accented English that her older brother enrolled her in the police department’s boxing camp. Sandra kept on getting into brawls, but now she was winning. She was expelled from Bell High School and enrolled at Metro, where she was once expelled for the same reason. Since she was admitted again last July, Sandra swears she is a new person.

“I was so scared,” says Sandra, 18, who was born in L.A. but raised in Mexico until she was 10. “Imagine not knowing any English and not knowing how to defend myself. It did hurt me because I didn’t know why they didn’t like me. But now, I don’t argue. If they don’t talk to me, it doesn’t bother me anymore. This program is helping me to change my attitude and love myself, respect myself and value myself.”

From the fellas on the street: “Psst! Mamita, come here!” Like most of the girls, Blanca Ortiz, 16, lives in South-Central and rides the bus to school. This means walking a block through the homeless mission’s corridor, downtown’s grimy industrial area, and past the Greyhound bus terminal. It also means tolerating a lot of whistles, hoots, hollers and honking horns.

“I had no idea it was going to be so nasty around here,” says Blanca, mother of 8-month-old Natalie Benitez. Her relationship with Natalie’s father is still strong; they plan to marry after her graduation. “It’s not fair that we have to listen to those perverts,” she says of the men on the streets. “They make us feel bad. I don’t like feeling like an object.”

Oct. 31, 2000

Herndon introduces a new affirmation to begin class: “My name is (blank), and today I feel (blank). I am a woman, and I see the good in me.”

Elizabeth gets into it. “Today, I’m feeling blessed, free and happy.”

“All right!” says Herndon.

The discussion switches to the power of words. Herndon reads two stories. In one, an overworked mother takes it out on her children by criticizing them and comparing them to each other.

“Now, that’s foul right there,” says Helen. “The worst thing you can do to us is compare us to your other children.”

“When I was little, I actually had a plan to kill my momma,” says Elizabeth, who still struggles to control her temper.

“Now what my momma says doesn’t matter to me no more,” says 17-year-old LaQuita Taylor. “You don’t always wanna kill your momma. You don’t always wanna be sad. You don’t always wanna be down.”

Words are weapons, says Herndon. “Words do hurt, but it’s very important that you learn to replace those words, those recordings.”

DePaolo calls Helen to the front of the class for a psychodrama. Her role is to be a silent mother who sits and listens while her daughters vent.

“Let’s think about Mom,” says DePaolo. “What would you say if she was sitting here and really listened to you?”

Elizabeth jumps at the chance to talk to her mother. Her parents divorced when she was 1, and her relationship with her mother has not always been easy. She turns to her older sister for the support she needs but recently moved back to her mother’s apartment.

Lately, she’s been worried about the way her mother mistreats her sister’s three children who live with them. Elizabeth looks at Helen and addresses her mother: “They’re gonna end up just as messed up as all your kids. All of us got problems in the head. Give them a hug before they go to school instead of yelling at them.”

Helen sits patiently, feeling the anger in her friend. DePaolo interrupts, “What do you want from her?”

“I don’t want nothing,” Elizabeth replies.

“Sure, you do.”

“Give me a hug,” says Elizabeth as she embraces Helen.

Next up: Lauren Powell. “When was the last time you gave me a hug? When was the last time you told me you loved me? You’re in church praising the Lord, listening to the pastor about how parents should treat their kids and kids should treat their parents. But you ain’t got no time for your kids.”

Helen’s eyes moisten and she gulps. DePaolo calls Tammi Maxwell, 18.

“Sometimes I don’t think you like me,” says Tammi. “You don’t act like my mom. You act like my sister. You abandoned us a couple of times. You didn’t tell us where you were or when you were coming back. It felt good because when you’re there all you do is nag.”

Says DePaolo: “Hang on to these feelings, girls. Later, when you’re a mother, you should remember what it felt like to be on the receiving end.”

Helen, who now gets along with her mother, says sitting in the hot seat made her want to cry. “The way they were talking made me want to make them feel better or do what they were asking,” she says. “Some of them girls said some deep stuff.”

The role-playing made Lupe want to weep too--if only she knew how, she admits later. Estranged from her family, Lupe maintains limited contact with her parents and younger sister and brother.

“When I heard, ‘When was the last time you told me you loved me?’ it hit me in the heart. I have not heard that in a long time. It’s really very hard for me to cry. But I was crying in the inside. I was always taught not to cry, not to let someone else see my weaknesses. Sometimes I think if I start crying, I will never stop.”

Nov. 7, 2000

The girls are meeting in the shop room today instead of the library. The expansiveness of the room energizes them. They are alert, vibrant, competing for attention. The discussion turns to media images of women. How are women perceived on television?

Anorexic, tall, with big breasts and long hair. Sexy, slutty, weak.

“Crying all the time for a man,” adds Rachel Ramirez, 16.

Herndon asks them to think of a movie, commercial or song that upsets them because of female stereotypes. Lupe volunteers, recalling an insurance commercial in which a “bimbo” takes a long time to answer a question because “she’s stupid.” Helen says the character of the daughter in “Married With Children” was a slut.

Herndon digs further: Do women promote the stereotype?

Yes, says Helen, take rapper Lil’ Kim, known for her revealing outfits and promiscuity. “But you shouldn’t feel affected unless you’re doing it too. It has to start with yourself. If you don’t want to be seen as dumb, go to school and be smart. It’s not going to change unless you start with yourself.”

Dec. 12, 2000

“Ma’am, what do you call a friend?” LaQuita asks Herndon, who wants the girls to think about their friendships. “I don’t think you really know if you have friends or not.”

A friendship, says Herndon, sparks from common ground, from trust.

“When you become adults, friendships take on new meaning and commitment,” DePaolo adds. She then asks the girls to pair up and go outside for the Trust Walk. One girl in each pair is to be blindfolded and led around the campus by her partner.

“The trick is to trust your partner,” DePaolo says. “In real life, when you have to trust somebody, it’s scary.”

LaQuita and Leslie Payne, 18, team up. Before the program began, they had never spoken. LaQuita, who says she had a tendency to be judgmental, disliked Leslie. “We had had some altercations but had never really talked. I didn’t know her.”

During the walk, LaQuita says, she feared Leslie would purposely let her bump into something. “But she didn’t. She was cool. We’re friends now.”

Jan. 9, 2001

The new year brings a new focus: healthy relationships with parents, friends and boyfriends. DePaolo wants the girls to notice the roles they play in these relationships and identify whether their behavior is healthy. Herndon asks for a count of those who are dating; half of the girls are.

LaQuita explains why she doesn’t have a boyfriend: “The way guys express themselves, the things they say to us, we don’t like it. But the guys don’t see anything wrong with that, and there are young ladies who tend to make excuses and accept the blame for the guy’s behavior.”

Love, says DePaolo, is irrational. “There are two things going on in your body: your thoughts and your emotions,” she says. “When your emotions take over, your thoughts go out the window. You’re up and down and all over the place. You’re flying high. You feel you’re the happiest woman in the world.”

Sandra thinks she understands. “Love is like a flower. Today, it’s all bright, and the next day it could be dead.”

“Even couples who marry say that after two years, that initial feeling is gone or lessened,” Herndon says. “That’s when you better hope you are good friends because the tingles are gone, and you really see each other for who you are.”

Women, warns DePaolo, tend to stay in relationships even after they start to go bad because the “girl will be in love with what was and not see the full picture.” When women do this, they are driven by a fear of rejection or abandonment, she adds.

For Sandra, the topic hits home. She has been dating her boyfriend for four years and dreams of being a psychologist. As she moves toward her goals, she worries that she might be outgrowing him. With money saved from her part-time clerical job, she furnished her bedroom and bought her mother a new stove for Christmas, her way of showing how sorry she is for her unruly past and how grateful she is for her parents’ support. The former street fighter has mellowed and is growing inside her femininity.

“I want to be independent, go to college and help my parents,” she says. “I want somebody to trust me and care for me and understand that I want to go to school and be educated. It’s so hard for us to depend on a guy, to find a guy who is going to help us. Guys are always wandering around and hurting us. Most guys I know just want sex. It’s so bad being a girl. It’s so sad being a girl.”

March 14, 2001

The sun is shining brightly, and all 63 of the program’s students are outside near the bleachers. The girls have been preparing for this day for weeks, but they are nervous. Very nervous. They giggle. They stumble over their words. They complain.

“Do we really have to do this?” this one whines now, and that one whines later.

“This is very important, ladies,” DePaolo reminds them. “We need to tell the boys what we want so they will have no more excuses.”

For the last seven weeks, the program has focused on sexual harassment and domestic abuse. Lily Herrera, of the Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, has lectured the girls on a variety of topics, ranging from rape to domestic beatings to venereal disease. She played popular songs by Eminem, the Beatles and Sting to discuss how the lyrics are demeaning toward women.

But in all of the discussions, the girls agree, something has been missing: the men. Don’t they need to hear this too? “The boys need a program because they are perverted and they need to learn some manners,” says Blanca.

At today’s assembly, the girls finally are going to stand up for themselves. They’ve made lists of all of the behaviors they consider to be sexual harassment. And they’ve written down all the qualities boys must display if they want to enter into relationships with them.

The 82 boys crack jokes as they take seats and stare at the girls. At the podium, the girls begin their litany of harassing behaviors. Among them: staring at or undressing them with looks; touching, rubbing, grabbing; blowing kisses, honking horns, making vulgar comments; commenting about premenstrual syndrome; stalking and making threats. Some boys holler and laugh; others seem puzzled.

Then comes the list of qualities necessary for a relationship: respect, honesty, good manners, reliability, maturity, trustworthiness, a good listener, affection and romance.

“What about our list?” yells one boy. Principal Raul Aguilar takes the podium and assures the boys they will get their say too. The program, he says, has done wonders for the girls, and he plans to create a similar class for the boys.

“If we don’t learn to communicate with each other, if we don’t learn to have respect for each other, we will not make a better world,” Aguilar says. “YWAR stands for Young Women at Risk, but I can truthfully say that our females are fast becoming Young Women Who Are Empowered. You are taking control of your lives, and you are respecting your lives.”

Many of the girls, like Blanca, who believed college was beyond their reach, now plan on seeking higher educations. But the program does not work for everyone, Aguilar and DePaolo recognize. Six girls have been transferred back to their home schools for a variety of disciplinary problems, including Elizabeth, who was dropped because of excessive absences. She has decided to quit school. Another girl withdrew after she became pregnant.

For the rest of the girls, DePaolo says, the program is just a beginning, a window into a different world they can aspire to live in. Next fall, the commission hopes to expand the program to at least four other schools. Officials also plan to keep track of the graduates for the next five years to see how they fare and gauge the program’s success.

“We need to work with the boys too,” says Aguilar, “because the girls can become as empowered as they can. But if we throw them back into that environment that created that lack of empowerment in the first place, they won’t get anywhere.”

Lupe already knows this. For three months, she has been living at a friend’s house and away from the pain of her childhood. Latinas, she says, are often raised to be second-class citizens, and she feels she has outgrown the limits of her traditional Mexican upbringing.

“I know that I’m growing up to be a fine, young woman who won’t get put down by any man or nobody ever again,” Lupe says.

Her eyes focused on the future, Lupe is looking for a part-time job and worrying about how she will afford college when she graduates next year. She also is in counseling, hoping to capitalize on the kernels of truth she has been facing since the program began in the fall.

“I know this program has helped me a lot,” she says. “I’ve matured and I’ve changed the way I think. It’s not like I’m not at home because I wanted my freedom. It’s just that I want to be respected. I don’t want to be treated like I don’t count anymore. Latinas are brought up to be obedient, pretty, dress right and sit right. I won’t raise my daughters that way. I have big dreams.”

The bashful girl who spends hours reading books about nutrition, vitamins and herbs or at Union Station watching the trains has surprised herself this afternoon. She participated in the assembly and was not embarrassed by it.

“I did all right, huh?” she says and smiles. “You think the guys got it?” She looks down and answers her own question: “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we did it.”