Narbonne High teacher stopped this run at a football prospect Last week, a neat little nugget was tucked into the bottom of a story about USC's new head football coach, Steve Sarkisian. The piece by Eric Sondheimer - the local treasure who covers prep sports for The Times - noted that Sarkisian had dropped by Narbonne High School in Harbor City last month to check on a star football player. Sarkisian got as far as the athlete's classroom door, but in the equivalent of a great goal-line stand, the teacher turned him away. The young man was a student first, and he happened to be studying U.S. government with the rest of his honors class, the teacher informed the coach. She didn't appreciate the interruption. I knew the moment I read this that I had to meet such a stand-up teacher, so on Thursday I drove down to Narbonne. As I entered the office, four well-dressed, exceedingly polite sophomores appeared. They told me they were members of the school's Public Service Academy and were running an errand for their teacher. Two of them told me they're going to be lawyers, and the other two want to be a firefighter and a police officer. Somebody was clearly doing something right at this school. Principal Gerald Kobata attributed the school's atmosphere to a lot of good students and good teachers, too. And as we talked, one of those teachers suddenly appeared. Veronica Bennett, the best defender Steve Sarkisian ever met, has a big voice and robust personality, but she was uncomfortably shy about my visit. She's no different from most teachers, she told me. And she was just doing her job. Teaching, it turns out, is not Bennett's first career. The Bay Area native worked in sales for a dental lab and then became a benefits administrator for a chemical company. But it wasn't fulfilling work, so when a friend suggested she was good with kids and should consider teaching, she went back to school at age 42 to earn a credential. "My thought ... was that I would keep going until a door closed," said Bennett. But the doors kept flying open. She started teaching at Narbonne in 1996, and has never regretted her midlife career switch, despite the challenges. Many of her students are dealing with poverty, neighborhood crime and peer pressure. "But when you get with them one-on-one," Bennett said, "they all want to succeed." It was early November when Sarkisian visited Narbonne. He was head coach at the University of Washington at the time and wanted to lure Narbonne defensive back Uchenna Nwosu up to Seattle. Ironically, Nwosu wasn't interested. He'd already committed to USC. "It was third period," Bennett said. So during the course of our lesson, I get a school aide who comes and says the student needs to go to the athletics office. And I said no, we're right in the middle of class. Bennett has a way of making that single word - no - into a lecture. It's all about tone, attitude, body language. Maintaining the focus of her third-period students can be tricky, she said, so she doesn't like distractions. "They're nice kids, don't get me wrong," she said. But they're very social. Moments after the first aide was turned away, another one appeared. Same request. Same reply. Even my temperature was rising as Bennett related the story. So she leaves, and five minutes later I get a counselor coming in. By that point I'm pretty steamed," said Bennett, who told me her students "were now bouncing off the walls."