Chapter Chair Profile

 

Lou DiCarlo, Chapter Chair of West Valley Occupational Center in Woodland Hills for the last two years, is another activist with a wide variety of experiences prior to his present position as an academic teacher in adult education.

 

Lou grew up in New York, spending summers on his aunt’s dairy farm in the country.  At age 13 he began dealing with the public, working in his father’s fruit and vegetable store on Staten Island.  He got a taste for the many flavors of human life by waiting on customers who ranged from the borough president’s wife to the local mafia boss.  Later Lou attended college, completing a degree in Psych pre-med, but needed a stronger sampling of the real world after graduation.  Besides attending Woodstock, he worked as a baker, hitchhiked across Canada, worked with show horses in Ringling Brothers’ Circus, and had a leather shop.

 

Since 1974 he has practiced Nichiren Buddhism, which actively works for world peace through self-transformation and the revitalization of culture and education.  He began teaching in 1975 at a residential special ed school.  Lou went back to college in 1977, taking upper level sciences to apply for med school.  However, by this time his view had shifted sharply from an allopathic approach to health to a more holistic one, so he decided not to pursue a traditional medical career.  While in school, Lou was a manager at Catch a Rising Star, a popular New York comedy club, consorting with the likes of Bill Maher, Paul Reiser, Pat Benatar, and Jerry Seinfield before they all “made it.”

 

Lou began teaching for LAUSD in September 1994.  He’s taught science at Lawrence Middle School, ESL, citizenship, and has worked in the II Lab at WVOC since 1998.  He is now leading the charge against the current challenge to our adult and occupational ed programs at WVOC.  All in all, not a bad start for a young man beginning to make his way in the world, don’t you think?

 

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