Students, teachers and administrators in Santa Ana struggle to adjust in the early stages of the law's implementation. In its first week, Proposition 227 has made Isabel Gervais' first-grade class at Martin Elementary a little edgy. During a math and language lesson, Gervais asks her students to draw figures and numbers. Draw five squares.
Students sneak peeks at their neighbors' papers.
Some draw figures, then feverishly erase them, unsure whether what they've drawn is what Gervais wanted. The classmates scribble five squares onto their papers. In this atmosphere, kids timidly answer questions in English. Some wince at Gervais' English. Only last week their teacher spoke to them in fluent Spanish.