Camps Afflerbaugh-Paige

La Verne is just about 10 miles north and west of here, past the Vons grocery store and the 210 freeway. Just 35 miles east of Los Angeles, at the base of the rolling San Gabriel mountains you will find a relatively wealthy neighborhood which is 77.1% white and boasts of a median income of $46,587. A bit further up, past the golf course and Steven's Ranch, you will find the County of Los Angeles' juvenile probation camps Afflerbaugh and Paige, housing approximately 200 wards of the state at any one time. This facility incarcerates males ages 13-18 for sentences which range from 3 months to 18 months long. Camp Afflerbaugh and Paige differ in only a few ways, namely that Paige houses those incarcerated for slightly longer sentences (and hypothetically more "severe" crimes) and Afflerbaugh has a larger total population, but for the most part, these camps are operated similarly.

Within the facility wards are shuffled from the dorms to "line up" to the cafeteria, to the office or the counselors, and for about seven hours a day, these boys are required to attend high school within the camp, at the Camp AP High School. Their heads are shaved, they are all dressed in baggy denims and county-issued BC shoes and they are counted between each movement of the day. They are called wards, taggers, teenagers, minors, gangbangers, b-boys, fathers, sons, delinquents, criminals, boys and men, but when I see them, they are students.

For the next year I will be teaching at Camp Afflerbaugh-Paige and training and leading teams of college student teachers-in-training. I will be charged with preparing curricula, balancing the interests of the school, the camp students and the college students, and designing programming with an eye towards the long-term social justice implications of our work.

Despite most efforts to make the wards identical and identity-less, there are several systems of differentiation and hierarchy at play in the camp. The wards of the two camps are kept separate in most cases due to racial rivalries and neighborhood hostilities except for within the high school where students are mixed into classes together. The camp receives them from juvenile halls who receive them from the courts, who receive them from the police. Upon arrival, the school administers a series of tests and breaks the students up into fifteen "groups" according (supposedly) to their academic levels. But these tests are not without flaws. Aside from the uniforms, the harsh disciplinary measures and the fences around the facility, the high school attempts to operates just like another other LA high school. School is comprised of English or Language Arts, social students/history, science, math, and P.E.

To teach within a juvenile camp is to teach at the mercy of the penal institution. Wards are incarcerated first, students second and it is manifest in the many ways that the camp asserts power over the school. Students on work crew attend school every other day, alternating with work days clearing brush out in the hillsides or mowing the lawns on the grounds. Students come and go from groups at the discretion of the POs (probation officers). They are moved to the "box" for a week at a time for any disciplinary issue. And students who earn the pedigree to work in the kitchen crew (KPs) or laundry, show up ten minutes late to each class with bags of oranges or packaged pastries stuffed into the elastic waist of their pants. On any given day, there will be new transfers from juvenile hall or other juvenile camps, and students who have been released with the termination of their sentence. The classroom dynamic is in a state of constant flux.