Ann Brenoff, along with 70 other editorial employees, got laid off March 23 from the Los Angeles Times, where she had worked 18 years as an editor and reporter.

The next day, the 59-year-old journalist, who most recently made her name writing a syndicated column tracking celebrity real estate transactions, started scribbling on the back of a grocery list at her Topanga Canyon home.

The result: a company helping other unemployed journalists ?einvent themselves as I learn to reinvent myself.? The startup organizes after-school classes for elementary school students that are taught by journalists.

?ur corporate headquarters is my dining room table,?Brenoff said of After-School Days, the company she founded with her husband, Victor Johnson, a Times editor who retired in 1995.

In little more than two months, the former Hot Property columnist said she established five classes in two Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District schools. By September, she expects as many as 50 more in Southern California and envisions franchising her concept. The after-school classes run about six weeks, costing parents $110 to $130 per session.

And since word of her venture has spread on the Internet and by word of mouth, she? received more than 100 resumes from out-of-work journalists nationwide. Perhaps not surprisingly, since the part-time pay is a generous $50 an hour.

?t will be great for me,?said Nancy Wride, a former Times reporter who needed some extra income to help care for her 9-year-old son. ?t will pay for summer camp and karate lessons. I think a new order of things has truly come in which we?e all freelancers, cobbling together assignments and projects to support ourselves.?p>Among the classes is Make-a-Book, in which children write and illustrate a 12-page hardcover (Wride will teach that class); Mind Games involving word scrambles and brain teasers; and an after-school Newspaper Club in which experienced print journalists help children put out their own school paper.

The goal of the Newspaper Club is to improve communications skills, ?ot encourage newspaper careers,?Brenoff quipped.