What's quote of the day at this auto training center?

At 8 a.m. one Monday morning, about a dozen students, four instructors and five administrative staff members surrounded by Toyota cars and trucks gather in a circle in the middle of an immaculate auto repair facility in the Crenshaw District.

This is no typical fix-it shop, however. It's the Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center -- one of several job training centers that have popped up around L.A. County since last year's riots. Twenty students are currently enrolled in this particular center.

This particular center is a joint venture between Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., the Torrance-based marketing arm of Japan-based Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A., and the Los Angeles Urban League, a nonprofit organization dedicated to, among other things, job training and placement for inner city youth.

Toyota's Torrance subsidiary donated $3.1 million to fund three years of training at the center. And the Urban League coordinates the center's administrative staff, which conducts the testing, selecting, counseling and placement of student. The Urban League also brings to the table its connections and goodwill with the surrounding community, says Victor Le Blue, the center's assistant general manager, who is on loan from the Urban League.

The students standing in the circle this Monday morning, mostly black and Hispanic males, along with one woman are distinguishable from the center's staff primarily by the sharp-looking grey mechanics uniforms the students wear. The students range in age from 18 to 45. What follows is like a pep rally. General Manager John Saia takes the lead: "How is everybody doing today?"

"Not too shabby," one student replies enthusiastically.

Then employment adviser Cynthia Nooner calls roll by the students' first names. "Dexter, Alan, Richard, George, Vance..." All are present and accounted for.

Student Tremaine Hilton is then chosen to stand in the center of the circle. When he gets there he begins asking those around him how they are feeling.

"I'm feeling pretty good," student Vance Tenort replies. "I'm trying to start off the week with a positive attitude."

Along with the state of their emotional well-being, the students and staff members also volunteer a quote for the day.

"I'm going to keep my focus and try to run a good race," Alan Jones says.

"Don't let anybody shake your tree," Saia says.

Afterward, each student and staff member places one hand in the center of the circle, like a high school football team would before kickoff, and hollers out a cheer. "Every day, in every way, A.T.C. rebuilds L.A.," they chant. "A.T.C." stands for automotive training center.

Next, the students disperse to pick up litter that had accumulated outside the center over the weekend, explains Tenort as he finishes a McDonald's Egg McMuffin before setting out on this task.

Jones takes a broom and dust pan and sweeps the sidewalk in front of the building, aided by Hilton, who helps by picking up a lone cigarette butt and placing it into the pan.

Hilton was a carpenter by trade but had trouble getting work in that field. Being trained in automotive mechanics would open up new job opportunities for him, he says.

The students come from eclectic backgrounds. Carlos Noyles is an ex-gang member who has a bullet in his leg. Jones spent two years in a Christian ministry rehabilitation program because of a drug problem.

After the grounds are swept clean, classes begin. In a room upstairs, the brakes-and-exhaust class takes a written "brake system post-test," and then goes over the test material afterward with instructor Antonio Salas.

"A customer says his brake pedal feels spongy. What would your diagnosis be?" Salas reads aloud.

"The answer would be 'D.' The brake hydraulic system has air in it," says Wendy Gaston, the only female student, who reports that she used to help her dad work on cars when she was young.

Downstairs in the auto shop, Tenort gives Clyde Clemmons a quick course in wheel alignment, while Jones hooks up sensors to a truck's wheels to check their alignment.

Currently there are two classes being taught at the Los Angeles Urban League Automotive Training Center, the brakes-and-exhaust class and tires-and-suspension class. Seven different classes are offered altogether during different times of the year.

While Toyota and the Urban League work at training aspiring auto mechanics in Crenshaw, another joint venture is working to train 20 aspiring grocery clerks at a facility in Compton. Those clerks-in-training are to eventually be placed in jobs at Vons stores.

This center, officially called the Regional Job Training Center, is in a 38,000-square-foot facility that Rosemead-based SCEcorp donated and spent $2.4 million to refurbish.

The training program is a joint venture between SCEcorp, local communities (such as Lynwood and Compton), local educational institutions and local businesses, says Ed Robinson, an SCEcorp executive on loan to the center.

SCEcorp has also made a commitment to donate $400,000 to the center every year, for the next five years.

Arcadia-based Vons Companies Inc. has contracted with the Torrance-based South Coast Regional Occupational Center organization to train workers for a supermarket Vons is building in Compton that is expected to open in December. All 20 students are guaranteed a position at the store upon graduation.

Basic-skills instructor Terry Wilson-Standifer, who is teaching the aspiring clerks on this particular day, stands at the head of the Vons training room -- by a marker board upon which she is writing the day's vocabulary words.

"Our next word is 'competence.' OK, Mr. Johnson," Standifer says, motioning to one student to define the word.

"It is the state or condition of being competent," Hannaiailove Johnson replies.

"What is one of the things I tell you never to do?" Standifer queries. "Use the word to define the word. Somebody expand on that."

"Competence is the ability to do something," chimes in Edward Sheppard.

The class continues reviewing vocabulary words, many of which are related to achievement, such as 'motive' and 'incentive.'

Sheppard, 29, who spent 10 years in the military and couldn't get a job when he got out, says most of the class material is merely review for him, but that the has picked up some useful tips.

For instance, "I never knew that you couldn't put a piece of raw fish next to a piece of cooked fish" because the fresh fish has bacteria that can transfer to the cooked fish, he says.

Also, workers in Vons' meat department are required to wash down the slicer every time they cut a piece of meat so they don't spread bacteria, Sheppard says.

The Vons program isn't the only course being taught at the Regional Job Training Center. Across the hall, other students are training for jobs using computers. Bertha Credille, who works for the Compton Unified School District, is teaching a separate group of students how to operate computer programs, such as WordPerfect, Lotus and Dbase, as well as basic typing, English, math and filing skills.

She recalls one female student. "When she walked into my classroom she'd been drug-free maybe 30 days."

"She would cry and weep about anything. I had a hard time getting her still enough to work," Credille says. "I was between kicking her out of the class and hanging on. She seemed really smart."

Credille recalls that the student started out typing about 10 to 15 words per minute, and slowly worked her way up to 50. Eventually the student studied, passed and got the third-highest score on a written civil service exam, Credille says. She was eventually hired by the County of Los Angeles.

L.A.'s newest job training center, Los Angeles-Opportunities Industrialization Center, opened Oct. 12. San Francisco-based Chevron Corp. donated $1.3 million to the L.A. chapter of Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America Inc. to acquire a 20,000-square-foot building to house the center. The nonprofit OIC provides employment training and placement for disadvantaged, unemployed and unskilled Americans.

Since its opening, the center has been offering training to workers in the culinary arts, retail sales, office occupations such as accounting and secretarial positions, and automotive services.