MOTHER, DAUGHTER TEACHERS SPLIT UP CLASSROOM TEAM.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

VAN NUYS - Teachers Gayle and Riley Fish hugged their students in Room 46 at Mulholland Middle School for the last time together Friday, wishing them all a great summer.

It was a bittersweet day for mother and daughter - one of the most unique teaching teams in Los Angeles Unified School District history.

Mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons, have taught school together at the same time, some even in the same school over the years.

But no one at LAUSD headquarters can remember a pair ever teaching together at the same time in the same classroom.

That was coming to an end, though, Friday for these math and science teachers sharing a large classroom this year to help with a space squeeze at the school. Mom and daughter were breaking up.

Or as the kids on the Van Nuys campus say, Little Fish and Big Fish won't be teaching together anymore. Bummer.

Hey, it's better than the moniker the eighth-grade kids stuck on them when they first started teaching in the same classroom together - Old Fish and Young Fish.

``No way I was going to be called Old Fish,'' said Gayle, who teaches the kids math at one end of the classroom, while Riley teaches them science at the other.

``Big Fish, OK, I told the kids, but not Old Fish,'' she said, laughing.

In many ways, this is another changing of the guard for this family of LAUSD teachers that dates back to 1921 when Gayle's grandfather, Marcy Riley, started teaching print shop classes at Venice High School.

Her mother, Blanche Robinson, began her LAUSD career in 1940, teaching math at University High before moving on to half a dozen other high schools in her 34-year career. She still tutors high school math students in the Thousand Oaks area.

``As for me, I've been teaching in the district for more than 30 years, and am looking at a couple more, max,'' said Gayle.

Then, there's Riley, named after her grandfather. She didn't necessarily want to be a teacher, she said, but when the profession runs through your blood like it does in her family, well, you find yourself drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

You know the money isn't that great, and the profession often gets a bad rap, but there's just something about turning on that light bulb in a kid's mind.

``It was in her genes,'' Big Fish says proudly. ``I knew that the first time I saw her in front of a classroom. She had the glare.''

You don't survive in the teaching profession very long without the glare, Big Fish said. The kids will eat you alive.

Little Fish says she's eager to start her new job next semester teaching science magnet at Nobel Middle School in Northridge, but she's going to miss teaching with her mom, to whom she always deferred in class, she said.

``I liked the fact that I could show the kids, 'Hey, you listen to your mom. I do, even at my age,' '' said Riley, who recently got married and will be going from Miss Fish to Mrs. Leary at her new school.

``I'll miss looking across the classroom and not seeing my mom there, smiling and nodding at me,'' she said. ``Miss the kids giggling and laughing in class every time I call her mom.''

They're going to miss it, too, the kids in Room 46 say. They realize something very unique has been going on in their classroom this year.

``You can't get away with much, that's for sure,'' said 13-year-old Jackie De Latorre.

But it's been neat, too, says 12-year-old Sylvia Lee. ``They make jokes about each other, and we're always teasing her about calling Big Fish, 'mom.'

``I'm going to miss Little Fish,'' she said.

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Photo:

(color) Riley Fish, left, and mom Gayle Fish taught science and math this year at Mulholland Middle School in Van Nuys, but will split next year.

Phil McCarten/Staff Photographer