Hands are flying up in the seventh-grade social studies morning class at St. Raphael School like this is a bargain-basement "Antiques Roadshow" auction.

"Why are his kids going to a private school?" "Does the president get paid?" "How much?" different students want to know.

Stepping deliberately among the U-shaped configuration of blond desks, hands clasped together behind her back, Jasmine Mora patiently answers every student by name.

"Excellent," she says crisply when an African American boy explains that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and a Hispanic girl reports how he worked as a community organizer in Chicago. "I think it is so neat that you are watching the news."

The junior high students respond by holding up their hands again and wiggling them, which they've learned is silent sign language for clapping.

The second-year Loyola Marymount University PLACE (Partners in Los Angeles Catholic Education) Corps teacher in the black dress suit asks why they use a Bible to swear in a new president.

Another Latina says, "Because he's promising to God."

"Excellent," Mora repeats, adding, "The biggest person he's responsible to is God." She explains there was a time when women and African Americans couldn't even attend a presidential inauguration.

Next, she asks every student to write down two questions they would like to ask President Obama and collects them then in a paper bag. Then she reads each one: "Would you like to meet Martin Luther King, Jr.?" "Why did you want to be president?" "Did you have a rough childhood?" "Do material things matter to you?" "What is your favorite song?" "Will your life change now?"

The 24-year-old teacher walks through the desks to the back of the second-floor classroom - which is decorated with inspirational quotes like "Be the change in the world you wish to see" and the colored flags of different nations - before turning around. "So a lot of you want to know what is inside this man," she observes, nodding thoughtfully. "That is good. Some very interesting questions that you asked.

"I want you to spend this weekend thinking about great leaders," she goes on, returning to the front of the classroom. "When you come back after the holiday weekend, we will have a new president that will affect all of us."

Passion for teaching
As the social studies and sixth-grade homeroom teacher, Mora has already affected a significant number of the 286 students at St. Raphael's near Vermont Avenue and Hoover Street, according to principal Barbara Curtis.

"Jasmine is fabulous," the veteran administrator says. "She's dedicated. She's intelligent. And she just brings a passion for teaching. She brings a passion for social studies. You walk into her classroom and you know that this is social studies, whether she's streaming in part of a newscast or video, whether she's putting quotes on the board that have to do with something that's happening in the world today.

"And she's just got a calmness about her that you don't find in new teachers," Curtis points out. "From the moment that she greets the children as they're walking in - 'Good morning' or 'Good afternoon' - to the end of class."

The Wilmington native, who lives with nine other PLACE Corps teachers in a former convent in Compton, smiles and almost blushes when reminded about her classroom demeanor. As a partial explanation, she confides how she can definitely relate to her Hispanic and African American mostly low-income students. She knows what it's like to grow up a minority in poverty, to have to translate for her parents at teacher conferences and to be the first member of her family to graduate from high school.

Her father, Angel, was a construction worker, but often couldn't find employment. To make ends meet, Rogelia, her mother, looked after toddlers in their home during the day and cleaned houses on weekends. Jasmine and her younger sister, Lisbeth, would help out when they got to high school.

"My mother cleaned houses in Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills Estates, which is where a lot of my classmates at Mary Star of the Sea in San Pedro lived," Mora reports. "While my mother was ironing, I would be cleaning bathrooms, and it was very humbling cleaning those toilets. It was something that I could not share with my classmates ever."

In a good year, her parents combined income was $18,000, but when times were really tough it sunk to $11,000 for a family of four.

Her mom and dad, deeply religious immigrants from Mexico, wanted badly for Jasmine and her sister to attend the parochial school right across the street, SS. Peter and Paul. But the struggling family couldn't come close to affording the tuition until they found out about the Catholic Education Foundation.

With tuition assistance from the 21-year-old philanthropic organization, which helped nearly 7,000 students with financial aid last year, both Mora girls were able to attend parochial elementary school and then Mary Star of the Sea High School. Both also went on to the University of California, Berkeley, Jasmine graduating in 2007, while Lisbeth will graduate this spring.

Many of the social studies teacher's students are currently receiving tuition awards from the Catholic Education Foundation. "I see myself completely in them," she says. "And I have shared my story with them. I've said, 'I was once you. I was once a student who received a scholarship, too.'"

A challenge
Being a new teacher in the best of educational settings is difficult, but when you throw into the mix an inner-city school it becomes a demanding trial, according to Jasmine Mora. Although she can relate to the grinding poverty that many of her students come from, she never belonged to a gang or experienced the day-to-day street violence so common in many L.A. neighborhoods today.

"I don't quite yet know how to teach to kids who have relatives in gangs and see people getting shot," she admits. "They just carry these problems with them. I think trying to address the larger social factors behind gang violence, crime, the language barrier and poverty is a challenge.

"And those things have to be addressed," she stresses. "Because if one of my students is coming in and blurting out and acting up because, for example, his father was shot, well, I can't just address the child then and there. It has to be a wider spectrum: What's going on in the community? What's going on in society and the world? So that's been my biggest challenge."

What helps a lot during her social studies classes is bringing in Catholic social teachings on issues. During Hispanic Heritage Month this year, for example, her sixth-graders studied El Salvador and talked about the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero by a government death squad in 1980. She also likes to discuss experiences she's had traveling to different countries and U.S. locales, letting students know there's a world outside of South Los Angeles.

Moreover, the teacher tries to bring up at suitable moments the opportunities -from college to careers - open to anybody who's motivated and driven. Her primary example at the moment, of course, is Barack Obama.

And then there are the tangible rewards of teaching at a 60-year-old urban parochial school like St. Raphael's.

"Yeah, I like that part," she says with a chuckle. "The rewards I've definitely seen a lot more of this year because I'm a better teacher. I feel like I am more effective, and that has been a reward in itself."

She talks about a lesson on India's caste system and how students were comparing it to what's happening in the United States. When she offered some examples of who might be at the bottom here, including the homeless and out-of-work veterans, students - without prodding - piped up with immigrants.

"I did not say that, it was them," the teacher notes. "That's a reward. That's a huge reward. If they can get that critical thinking going on their own, then I did my job."

But Mora says one of biggest rewards this year actually happened outside the classroom. In October she got a scholarship to take her sixth-graders to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana. For lunch they went to a nearby park and spread out on blankets. Even students who occasionally acted out in class or talked back were enjoying themselves, joking and tossing a Frisbee around.

"It was just one of the most loving, peaceful moments that I had experienced all year," the young teacher confides. "Just little things like that are definitely rewards."