“The Ritual” Tells The Story Of Inglewood Educator Tedric Johnson

Inglewood Educator Tedric Johnson (Los Angeles Standard)

BY JASON LEWIS

LOS ANGELES, CA (LOS ANGELES STANDARD) -- The Spot SoDo Studios has produced a documentary on Inglewood educator Tedric Johnson, who taught Black and Latino boys at Morningside High School who many teachers did not want to deal with. Through the Schools with a Purpose program, Johnson took students who were considered trouble makers, and many of whom were in gangs, and turned them into positive and successful members of society.

“Mr. J took who California deemed as the worst,” said Dominic Banks, owner of The Spot SoDo Studios and a former student of Johnson’s. “I had given up on school. My mindset was more of a hustling mindset, and I didn’t care. The first day that I had walked in Mr. Johnson’s class, that brother gave me the ‘Autobiography of Malcolm X,’ and he told me to read this. I opened up that book and it changed my life. I turned from being the kid that didn’t care to one of the top students in his class. I made sure to be an example of his program to my other peers.”

“Mr. Johnson would call my house if I was not in his class,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Robert Hawkins, who is also the president of the Los Angeles City Stentorians African American firefighters association and a former student of Johnson’s. “If I chose to ditch, he would know, and my mother would know. Because of Mr. Johnson’s influence, I didn’t want to get on his bad side. I looked up to him and respected him. I loved him like a fatherly figure. It meant everything in the world to me for him to be proud of me. He was my role model. He knew how to talk in business meeting but he also knew the gang culture. He knew the big homies from the neighborhood, and he squashed so many beefs in his class.”

Johnson was able to connect with the boys in his class because he had their same background. He went to school in Inglewood. He had a similar upbringing in the same neighborhoods as his students so he could connect with them in ways that other teachers could not.

“I knew the areas in which they came from,” Johnson said. “I could speak the jargon. I could relate to them. I was someone who they could connect with. I am them. I matriculated through the Inglewood schools. To see someone who came back to the community, who was once them, who went to college and graduated, participated in sports, that was something that gravitated them to me and I gravitated to them. They were able to see someone on a day to day basis who was able to go through the system within Inglewood and come back and be represented in a positive manner. As African American males, we see many people that we perceive as being role models, but they are not tangible. Athletes, entertainers, politicians. But how many times do you get to interact with that person on a day-to-day basis where they can provide them with quality time and mentoring?

“It was my job to make sure that these individuals were taught from a perspective that they could understand. It was culturally responsive teaching. To incorporate from an Afrocentric perspective. It was my job to tap into their greatness and instill confidence in them so that they could be successful.”

Johnson’s program was created by the Los Angeles County Office of Education in 1991 and it ran until 1997.

“The concept was that it was a school within a school model,” Johnson said. “The concept arose out of the need to help African American males matriculate through high school, middle school, and elementary. The reason why this came about was because the African American male population were being denied a quality education. They were suspended and expelled at a higher rate than any other ethnic group and gender. One of the main principles was to choose African American men to lead these classes. I was fortunate enough to be chosen.”

Johnson believed that it was not the Black males fault that they were not succeeding, but the system and individuals within the system who were not giving them a fair chance.

“Teachers were intimidated by some African American males,” Johnson said. “So any specific reason that they could give to eliminate them from the class — not having a pencil, coming late, not having homework — they used those excuses to get rid of them from their classes. So therefore, if they were not in class, it was difficult for them to learn and to matriculate through the system. If individuals are given the proper tools and the proper environment for success, they will succeed. Success must be presented to all individuals without obstacles.”

Johnson taught the core curriculum of English, math, science, and social studies. Through his class he saw that his students had great improvements in confidence, accountability, respect, and they were getting better grades. Johnson’s mentorship also steered his students away from gangs.

“Ultimately if some of them stayed on the track that they were on, that would lead to either incarceration or an untimely death,” Johnson said. “I preached that on a daily basis.”

Telling Johnson’s story was extremely important to Banks because Johnson changed his life and the lives of many others like him.

“This tells the story of a gentleman who came back to his community in spite of the various gang culture that was going on at that time,” Banks said. “It’s also important because of the teachers. A lot of times teachers are not looked upon or paid financially in the same stipend that we pay athletes or entertainers. We admire those people. But yet there wouldn’t be any athlete, entertainer, or politician, without a teacher. This is a story of the gentleman who enlightened a lot of us. As a society we’re failing our youth. We’re losing kids constantly. We have an influx of gangs and weapons. We need to go back to the core teaching when teachers cared. Teachers pretty much raise our kids. We send our kids to school for eight hours, and if the teacher isn’t right or is going through things, how can our kids listen?”

Many films about inner city Black life show a struggle throughout the story, but this documentary focuses on the change that these students made.

“We watched ‘Boyz N the Hood,’ ‘Menace II Society,’ and the various Black movies that always end the same way; with a mother crying and somebody dead,” Banks said. “Mr. Johnson’s story needed to be told because his program was successful and positive.”

The documentary features one of Johnson’s students who went on to become a scientist.

“That brother is an astrophysicist,” Banks said. “This was a brother that society had thrown away, that wasn’t going to make it. He meets Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Johnson puts him on the road to success. He gives him the confidence that he can be whatever he wants to be. As you see the movie, you will see how Mr. Johnson has touched people so that they can be successful in life and in their community.”

The environment that Johnson created inspired Hawkins to become a firefighter.

“I learned about the medical terms from his class,” Hawkins said. ‘Mandible,’ ‘phalanges,’ ‘occipital.’ He brought people to come and talk to us about opportunities.”

Johnson’s class instilled a confidence in Hawkins that he did not know that he had when he was put back in classes with the rest of the student body.

“When Mr. Johnson mainstreamed me, I still didn’t believe in myself,” Hawkins said. “It was my senior year, and he told me that I had to go. But I was getting on the honor roll for the first time. I trusted him, and when I was mainstreamed, it worked. That’s when I started believing in myself. I could do this on my own as a senior. I graduated early by having over credits by being in his class.”

The title of the film, “The Ritual” comes from rituals that Johnson had in his class. At the end of each class as each student left, Johnson would stand by the door and shake all of their hands. Johnson also used a ritual when his students broke rules.

“We had discipline in the class,” Hawkins said. “If you came late, or was ditching, you got your name on the board. We had this thing called ‘The Ritual.’ We went on the track and you ran miles and then we went into the weight room. You didn’t want your name on the board because that ritual hurt. But everyday we left his class we shook his hand.”

Dad, 4-year-old killed in Calif. shooting; 3 hurt

Police officers respond to the scene where a man, wearing a mask, set a duplex on fire and then shot five members of a family on Saturday, Oct. 20, 2012 in Inglewood, Calif. A father and his 4-year-old son were killed and a woman and two other young children were wounded by the gunman, authorities said. A 6-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl were in critical condition, Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta said. The woman, said to be the children's mother, was being treated for gunshot wounds to the knee and pelvis. An 8-year-old boy was uninjured. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Katie Falkenberg)

INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Police searched for a gunman who wore a painter's mask when he set fire to a home before going on a shooting spree early Saturday, killing a father and his 4-year-old son and injuring a woman and two other young children near Los Angeles.

A SWAT team set up a perimeter and was using dogs to search for the attacker, who may have lived in a rear house on the property, Inglewood Police Chief Mark Fronterotta said.

Five neighboring houses in Inglewood were evacuated as officers searched residences and the trunks of cars. Other nearby residents were told to remain inside with their doors locked. The suspect was described as armed and dangerous.

Investigators were trying to determine whether he fled or remained in the house as it burned.

The man wore a painter's mask apparently to shield his identity, Fronterotta said.

The gunman had known the family for at least eight years, according to Capt. Tom Richards of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Television footage showed a home gutted by flames and a plume of smoke rising over the residential neighborhood early Saturday.

Detectives determined the suspect set the house ablaze at about 4 a.m. before opening fire with a weapon, Fronterotta said. Earlier the chief said the blaze was started after the gun attack.

The 28-year-old woman, said to be the children's mother, was being treated for gunshot wounds. She was in critical condition, as was a 6-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the pelvis and a 7-year-old girl with a gunshot wound to the chest, according to a department statement.

After being shot, the mother carried the wounded 4-year-old to a neighbor's yard.

"This extraordinary rescue attempt by the mother occurred in spite of the fact that she had gunshot wounds to both legs," the statement said.

The 30-year-old father was shielding two of his children when he was shot, the chief said. He died in surgery, as did the 4-year-old boy.

An 8-year-old boy was uninjured.

Police have no motive. But a neighbor, Judy Castellanos, told the Los Angeles Times that the suspect lived in one of three units on the property and described him as "really weird" and "dangerous." She said he had not paid his rent for years and that a new property owner had been trying to evict him.

"He had been asked to leave by the end of this month," Castellanos told the newspaper, adding that he was reclusive and would not let anyone look inside his home. Castellanos, who said her daughter is related to the man who was killed, did not give the suspect's name.

The Buzz and What's Cracking

Ever since the tragedy in her family, all has just been going on well for this hard working girl whose movie, "Dream Girls", earned her an Oscar in a brilliant supporting female role. The movie, I will tell you, is one of the best I've seen when it was released on Christmas Day, 2006. Jennifer Hudson is everywhere and she is doing stuff. She will be among the lineups for NBC's "Today" summer jams and her appearance will be in June. Expect some damn good stuff when she delivers at Time Square in New York.

I read Emma Okocha's interesting response to David Ejoor's interview "The Reminiscences of David Ejoor..." which has erupted another Igbo-bashing. Okocha set the record straight with facts. I have no beef with Ejoor, but I have a problem with his theme of the said interview which lacked merit; and, all in all, fabricated and full of lies. Ejoor is a midget in the history books of the 'Nigerian' crisis, and for him to insult the late Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe on the grounds of premiership of a failed state, there must be something he has ultimately not revealed. His angst for a hard working and industrious Igbo is what I'm trying to figure out. But one thing, though, he made it patently clear in that interview that he is an Igbo hater.

Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley and Nas are teaming up for a new release titled "Distant Relatives" which has something to do with Nas and Marley's lineage which relates to Africa. Africa must unite and it all borders on that summer release and a world tour to promote the new album. On the other score, this year's Rock The Bells summer jams which will run across many North American cities including the City of Angels, will also feature Marley, Nas, Common, The Roots, Big Boi and many others. Rock The Bells is a hip hop festival organized every year.

Nas, so excited about his team work with Marley had this to say about Africa in general which was the whole idea of the album due to be released this summer: "As an American, we have so much even in a so-called recession that a neighborhood like Queensbridge or Red Hook is Beverly Hills compared to the way people are living in Nigeria, Sierre Leone, and Ghana. So obviously if we [are] making records with that theme, there's gonna be things I want to build on. I think Africa has a lot to teach us."

And Marley, in his own words; "Africa is the backbone of the world and the foundation of everything and Africans are in a situation where they need help more than anywhere else. We know there are dire situations here in America but when you look at America — with public libraries and free education — these are not opportunities most Africans have. It's a completely different scale of trying to help people. As humans beings, we're part of a human family."

What's going on with my Twitter these days? Methink Twitter needs to fix its infrastructure to alleviate the traffic jams. People wanna be moving and getting things done real quick but with such traffic jams, call it go slow, as the Chief Priest, Fela Kuti, would say, all Twitter need to do now is build more roads to make access to its destination easier. It's frustrating to wait on line to see what fellow tweeting addicts are saying or doing. It's better to know when someone is invoking your name. In many occasions this week alone as I try to check in to see what my fellow twitters are nagging about, I get some kind of strange response while breezing in. "Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again." Shoo, I wanna check in right away. I'm impatient because ain't nothing out there but tweeting, and that's the fun.

Around town, Seun Kuti's UCLA concert has been cancelled, so the organizes say. Austerity measure caught up with them and we will be missing another brilliant performance by the legendary Chief Priest's son, Seun. Elsewhere, the afrobeat maestro has many engagements in Europe. He will be touring Italy Germany, France and several other cities in Europe this summer. Seun, we miss your show and hopefully you will come back again to see us in the City of Angels.

Just poking around Inglewood, California, yesterday evening, I walked into Varja Books on Market Street and couldn't believe what I saw. Books dating back to the 18th century and vinyl albums from the early 1900s. I walked around and browsed through some books. The one that caught my eye was the LPs (vinyl albums). I went to the jazz section and combed through. Louis 'Satchimo' Armstrong, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, J. J. Johnson. Shorty Rogers, Benny Carter, Miles Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), and a whole lot of albums I haven't seen or heard were all stacked with price tags. Armstrong's album was selling for 700 bucks, John Coltrane 675 bucks, Coleman Hawkins 400 bucks, J. J. Johnson 455 bucks, Shorty Rogers 480 bucks, Ella Fitzgerald 395 bucks, Benny Carter 685 bucks and the list goes on and on, and on.

Now, guess what? I bumped into Theodora Ifudu's 1981 classic "This Time Around" and it was selling for 800 bucks. Azigbakwa!

That's "The Buzz and What's Cracking."

Lagos Cafe's Arrogance and Horrible Services is a Culinary Disaster

The problem with what happened to me this past Sunday afternoon, March 29, 2009, was that, I had woken up and had developed an appetite to eat some home kind of made food; the ofe olugbo, bitter leaf soup, coupled with the orishirishi, the ingredients and varieties of meats and dried fish that comes along with it.

Actually, there was no pub-crawling the previous night, quite unusual, which normally should have justified my quest to fill up my stomach from partying hard. And, precisely, not that I even went to see a show ending up hanging out where I'm not suppose to have been getting up the next day with some hangovers, headaches and things like that.

I was clean and sober. It's just that I did not feel like going to the popular Tak's Coffee House around my neck of the woods for lunch. I wanted bitter leaf soup and garri to do justice to my stomach. And here I am in my journey. And what a way to learn a lesson.

I had made up my mind to go to different Nigerian or African restaurants in the LA area, a place I am not a regular. Feeling like swallowing garri with a paste of deliciously prepared bitter leaf soup, I landed at Lagos Cafe run by Ronke Bernadette, located on the 1400 block of Crenshaw Boulevard in Gardena, California. It took me about half an hour to get there, driving through the Crenshaw thoroughfare of "Black Township", and combing on the cultural festivities of Leimert Park where a series of African American women dance and beat the drums on Sundays as if it is a spiritual revival. Crenshaw Blvd., from my destination to Gardena stretches through four different suburbs -- "The Jungle" around the Mid City area, Inglewood, Hawthorne and Gardena.

I was hungry and had anticipated a good meal, especially when breezing into a place I'm not a regular. But restaurants of the African ilk in the Los Angeles area are not just regular cuisines some few dollar can get you something to chew on. These are restaurants you have to spend at least 15 bucks for a regular meal, and 15 bucks for a regular meal in these days of belt-tightening is not a chicken change.

Anyways, here I go. I walked in to a place that looked totally deserted. The owner, Ronke and her friend who had told me she came from Togoland sat on one corner running their mouth -- without paying attention that a customer had arrived. I made my request: bitter leaf soup with mixed meat, dried fish and garri. I sat down and waited until only God knows when a waiter, apparently my home boy, popped up and told me my "food will soon be ready."

As it happened, my friend, Ardis Hamilton, whom I have known for many years dating back to the "read my lips" era called me, and I told him exactly where I was and how I got there. Immediately, he picked up interest to join me, in order to have a feel of a well-prepared African dish. In about 20-minutes, he was in. He was turned off right away because of the owner and her Togolese friend's attitude, loquaciously erring in French. Yes, they spoke French and did not care if a customer had arrived.

Meanwhile, I had waited long enough and my stomach was burning for some reason. I requested for some water to drink. Lagos Cafe had no water, absolutely no water for its customers which had me wonder why this garrulous woman and her friend are in business, in the first place. They drove down the street to buy some water after my request. In a restaurant and no water. Imagine!

At Veronica's Kitchen which sits on Manchester in Inglewood, the service is always great, the environment conducive and the waiters and waitresses well-behaved which is why the owner, Veronica Ogbeide, beats them all, hands down, and presumably from learning how to run a restaurant, effectively and efficiently.

However, they got my water while I waited for the so-called 'finest food' to arrive. Ardis, too, was looking forward to something special. To my friend's surprise, these talky women and the attendant who is also my home boy, changed their tone of language, all of a sudden, and just like that. Ngbati-ngbati, the normal Yoruba noise making kind of stuff, typical of a gabby Oshodi market women, became a trend, and it baffled my friend because they all knew he's a Yank as in "no speak English" a Hispanic would pretend to tell you.

My food finally came and I wanted my friend, Ardis, to taste the soup before ordering his own on my tab. Ardis has not recovered. His ass has been burning from the overseasoned habanero pepper and some other chili stuff that was used in cooking the soup.

In my own case, I'm the kind of guy who would eat up everything served and face the consequences later. Money is hard, these days, you know, but how could I have gotten myself into a situation where I now live in my restroom until the whole mess is flushed out from my system?

Not only that the service at Lagos Cafe was horrible, it was also ridiculously expensive. 20-something bucks and no leftover to take home? Come on, now, be real! At Veronica and 15-plus something bucks, you will have a whole lot of leftovers to take home, and you will be glad you did.

Lagos Cafe, Ronke, the talkative Togolese lady and my home boy, quote me, I will never be back because it really sucks, (excuse my language for I am pissed), and from my observation, you will be the last to earn a Michelin star.