The Classroom Literacy Project aims to break cycles of violence among juvenile inmates at Camp David.
Michelle Petty
Staff Writer
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of law …”
Everyone who’s seen an episode of “Law and Order” or “CSI” has heard these words before, but does one ever wonder what happens to an the arrestee if he or she is under age 18?
Twenty-two Pepperdine students in this and past semesters have found out. They make up the Classroom Literacy Project and volunteer their time to help educate juvenile inmates at Camp David Gonzales. They hope that they can do their part to break the cycle of violence by using education.
Nestled in the Santa Monica Mountains, halfway through Malibu Canyon Road, Camp David Gonzales started in 1962 as a facility the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors could use to educate inmates in juvenile hall without having to enroll them in public schools.
The camp’s namesake was a soldier in World War II who posthumously received the Medal of Honor for his valor and selflessness on the battlefield. The camp has become far more than a pretty place with a great name.
Camp David Gonzales is doing what it does best: giving inmates an opportunity to edify themselves.
Pepperdine alum Ty Kastendiek has worked at Camp David Gonzales for three years now. He graduated with a degree in religion and philosophy in 1986 and was on the volleyball team that won the NCAA championship in 1985 and 1986.
Kastendiek said he never would have thought that he would spend the past 12 years as a teacher for Juvenile Court Communication Schools.
There are the highs and the lows of working with felons, according to Kastendiek.
“A teacher’s first priority sadly isn’t teaching the class,” Kastendiek said. “It’s safeguarding the class. Because of the type of students we work with, 20 students to one teacher is more difficult than the 30 to one at ordinary high schools.”
But seeing the light in the students’ eyes when they finally get that five times three equals 15 or watching the class become genuinely upset at the end of “Hamlet” shows Kastendiek and others like him that it’s all worth it, they said.
But the teachers at Camp David Gonzales need more than big TVs and fancy computers.
Kastendiem has a simple response for what he wants most from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“I need more people that can just read to them and work with them,” Kastendiek said. “This is why I am so grateful to those Pepperdine students. When I can split my students into groups of three or smaller and have someone read to them or help them with math, things are so much better for my students.
“It didn’t take me long to notice that behavioral problems go down and proficiency goes up whenever the CLP kids are here on a regular basis.”
One visit is often enough to show students how important the program is.
“I almost left in tears on the first day,” Jackie Zampella said. “It was amazing to see these boys write poetry better than anything I’ve written an hour after they’d said there was no way they could do it. Seeing that kind of progress happen in one day opened my eyes to how much better they could be with enough of a push in the right direction.”
Even though the inmates at Camp David Gonzales have small successes, it is hard to measure the work done at the Camp by how well the students do after they leave the program.
“Sometimes we kids want to stay here because we’re safe,” one inmate said. “When you’re home, you have worry about staying alive. Here, I don’t have to worry about getting shot.”
Junior Lera Danley, one of the founders of the Classroom Literacy Project, said her most memorable students have taken full advantage of the one-on-one learning situation and excelled while at Camp David Gonzales. Danley urges anyone interested to volunteer and put that light in someone’s eyes.
Zampella said she plans to continue work like this throughout her life.
“Maybe a student will say again what I heard today,” she said. “‘Reading’s not too bad. It was fun.’”
Social Action volunteers offer ‘outsider’ perspective to Camp Kilpatrick youth offenders.
Lindsay Tuggle
Staff Writer
Most of the time, juvenile offenders at Camp Kilpatrick are surrounded by others like themselves: troubled males, age 12 to 17 years and all serving time for bad choices. However, once a week for two hours, a few young men get a chance to interact with an “outsider” on a one-on-one basis.
The Pepperdine Volunteer Center sends a group of student volunteers to the minimum security institution in Malibu once a week to tutor and mentor the boys.
Program Coordinator Melissa Mayes said she thinks the juvenile justice system is severely flawed, and because facilities like Camp Kilpatrick are so overloaded, the young offenders are not given the tools they need to become “productive” members of society.
“We (the student volunteers) try to give them the opposite message,” said Mayes, a junior social work major. “Someone cares, has expectations of them and will give them the support they need to break the cycles of crime, poverty, racial discrimination and gang violence that many of them are caught in.”
Mayes leads a group of about 12 students to the camp on Monday and Wednesday nights. While a few are there for class credit, many of the students said they decided to volunteer in their spare time to make a difference in the lives of the inmates.
Freshman Brianna Salinas fulfilled her Social Action and Justice volunteer requirement for the colloquium at Camp Kilpatrick in the fall. This spring, she said she is returning for personal reasons.
“I came back this semester by choice,” Salinas said. “I like to see the improvement in the boys’ confidence.”
Other students enjoy the opportunity to make a difference in a young person’s life that Camp Kilpatrick offers. Junior Jen Rojas said volunteers at the camp for similar reasons.
“It is a chance to let them reconnect with people their own age,” Rojas said. “They don’t really get to do that a lot.”
Each inmate is assigned to one volunteer for the 10-week program. All of the students pair up in one of the camp’s classrooms as a probation officer keeps an eye on the boys.
The volunteers’ at the camp time is split in half. The first hour is spent on academic material. The inmates do their homework, read books and work on attaining their GEDs.
Salinas noticed a significant improvement in the reading ability of the young man she tutored in the fall.
“At the beginning, he was uncertain about himself academically,” Salinas said. “By the end, we had read “Where The Red Fern Grows” together and he had looked forward to reading it each week.”
During the second half of their visits, the volunteers are encouraged to talk to the young men.
Subjects range from movies and music to the variety of backgrounds of each offender. The majority of them have known nothing but a life of crime from a young age. In many cases, these discussions have opened the eyes of the student mentors to a life they can scarcely imagine.
One inmate, whose name cannot be released because of privacy issues, said Camp Kilpatrick is his third or fourth such camp, and though he is only 16, he has been in and out of jail for about seven years. He has been at the camp for 11 months, and he has three months left before release. He said Camp Kilpatrick is the best facility he has been to because his family gets to visit him every Sunday.
The inmate hopes to go back to school once he returns to life “on the outs.” However, the offender admits to finding it hard to “stay straight” and “be good” when he is home because his brothers and peers are also involved in drugs, gangs and crimes.
“I am in a gang,” he said. “Pretty much most of the guys in here are. If you aren’t, you have nobody.”
The inmate said he doesn’t mind the camps because they are a lot safer than the world he knows on the outside.
“One day me and my brother were walking in front of my house,” the offender said. “A truck suddenly came around the corner and the guys in it shot at us for no reason and a bullet hit my friend.
“Those things happen all the time,” he continued. “You don’t have to worry about it here.”
Like this young man, many of those incarcerated at the camp are repeat offenders. According to Mayes, a recent study called “The Sixteen Percent Study” suggested that the majority of juvenile offenses are committed by 16 percent of delinquents. Juvenile detention facilities address this population and attempt to prevent future offenses by providing practical academic tools that will allow them to be successful citizens once released.
Despite these efforts, camps like Kilpatrick have a 75 percent recidivism rate, meaning that three-fourths of those released will end up coming back for another offense, Mayes said.
Pepperdine’s student volunteers seek to lower that rate by giving the inmates their time, attention and ultimately a positive perspective.
Camp Kilpatrick’s probation officer, Tom Barr, said he thinks the effort put in by the student volunteers will pay off tremendously.
“These boys don’t get a chance to interact with young people outside of the camp,” Barr said. “The influence of successful students in their life has made an impact on their behavior. I hope that it leaves a lasting impression.”
Submitted 03-31-2005