Putting the fun back in science
By Richard Irwin, Staff WriterSan Gabriel Valley TribuneAugust 9, 2007 The blue-tongued skink flicked its blue tongue in greeting as the students entered the classroom.
Inside, 9-year-old Chad Fournier slowly pulled a huge gopher snake out of his sleeve. Fortunately, the cold-blooded reptile had swallowed a rat the day before so Chad was in no peril.
"The snake is from Australia, he just wants to get warm," the smiling youngster explained. "I love reptiles. I even have a tarantula at home for a pet."
OK!
Around the room, other students proudly displayed all manner of creatures that slink about. Corn snake, milk snake, king snake.
The beasties came in a surprising rainbow of colors, ranging in size from slim whipcords to some the size of your arm.
But it was all in a day of fun during the summer classes at the Youth Science Center at Wedgeworth Elementary School in Hacienda Heights. Director Phyllis Vandeventer boasts that a wide range of "science" classes attracted more than 460 kids from kindergarten to eighth-grade.
Even the course names were intriguing. Beam Me Up, Kitchen Chemistry, From Pythons to Polliwogs, Circuit Cities, The Atoms Family.
The instructors certainly seemed to be having a good time, explaining why some had come out of retirement to teach the summer classes.
"I love teaching the kids about reptiles," said Paul Craig, a retired eighth-grade teacher from East Whittier.
Fellow retiree Lyle Majeska came out of retirement to show the children how to build their own rockets. The former electronics instructor at La Puente High School seemed as proud of the sleek rockets as the children.
"We're going to launch them tomorrow," bragged 7-year-old Sydney Owen.
Riiiiiight!
But don't expect the colorful comet to crash and burn, Owen packed a parachute in the nosecone to allow it to float slowly back to earth.
In a classroom nearby, other student were programming their Mars rovers. It was a Jr. JPL filled with tiny scientists, only without the pocket protectors.
"The science center is fun because it's so hands-on," said Sara Bach, a 27-year-old substitute teacher in the Rowland Unified School District.
The little engineers kneeled in front of their laptop computers, carefully programing the roving robots.
"You have to tell the robot what direction and how fast you want it to go," said 10-year-old Eric Moffitt.
But why send a roving robot to Mars?
"They're searching for signs of water to see if there has ever been life on Mars," the nascent NASA employee noted.
He didn't take kindly to a suggestion that he take his robot to the rocket class next door and blast it off into the cosmos.
Pat Stanzione's anatomy class was much friendlier, waving their phalanges (fingers to the rest of us) to the class visitor.
"We're teaching the second- and third-graders all about their bodies," the speech teacher in the Hacienda-La Puente Unified School District said.
The kids had built paper constructs with crumbled paper as brains and straws as bones. Red yarn traced the body's arteries, while blue represented the veins.
So how many bones are there in the human body?
"206," squeaked one of the precocious physicians.
Across the way, Alex Gutierrez was getting over her fear of bugs in the Backyard Entomology class.
"I thought they were scary, but now I like them because I know they won't hurt you," the 9-year-old said.
Tell that to the giant Madagascar hissing beetle in the nearby terrarium.
"He's only hissing to scare you," said Ansel Deng as he reached in to pick up the huge black bug. "I think earwigs are my favorite, but snails are fun, too."
Uggghhh!
"I love teaching about bugs," said Lynda Swink, a mild-mannered elementary teacher from the Pomona Unified School District.
Many of the teachers return year after year.
"I really love teaching at the science center because it's very hands on for the kids," said Andrea Brown, who has been teaching there for the past 17 years.
Her son, Jason, remembers taking classes when he was only 5 years old. Today, Jason teaches bridge building, CO2 dragsters and robotics.
"It's really nice that the science center has become so successful. Many of our students have gone to college and several are studying for their PHDs," said Ron Chong, who founded the center with his wife, Judy, in 1984.
The science center also offered summer classes at the Baldwin Academy in La Puente, Cogswell Elementary and Madrid Middle School, both in El Monte.
The one-week classes cost between $29 to $82 per student. Grants pay for scholarships for students who need them.
While the summer schedule has ended in Hacienda Heights, the classes have just begun in El Monte.
Now if kids can only find that leopard geiko that was missing. What exactly is an omnivore anyways?
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(626) 962-8811, Ext. 2801 Slimy Science
By Robert S. Hong, Tribune Staff Writer SOUTH EL MONTE — The 3-foot kingsnake coiled around the 7-year-old's arm traced its head slowly from side to side. Its tongue darted in and out as it inched itself toward Mario Covrrubias' face, but the boy showed no fear as he simply stroked the serpent's head, describing why the scaley reptile had captured his attention.
"He's a king snake and he can curl around everything," Mario said. "He's my favorite because he wraps around and holds on." This relatively passive snake was one of the many reptiles available for students to hold and learn about during the Mountain View School District's summer Science Academy at Cogswell Elementary School.
The program — which allows students to learn more about science through an entertaining and hands-on approach — was provided in large part through a grant from the San Gabriel Valley Learning Center.
Along with reptiles, students learned about outer space and some beginning chemistry, with all classes taught by instructors from the Youth Science Center in Hacienda Heights.
"We go through each animal and talk about its special characteristics," said Kristen Cooke, who taught first- through third-graders enrolled in the program. She was aided in her instruction by her father, former Whittier science teacher Paul Craig. On July 18, Cooke and Craig gave a lively description of how snakes hunt, and how some reptiles can regenerate their fangs. Surrounding the students were terrariums full of colorful snakes, a gecko and a blue-tongued skink.
On the other side of campus, a group of older students were also engaged in some hands-on work. But instead of playing with slimy reptiles, these students were making some slime of their own. Under the direction of teacher Patrice Stanzione, these fourth- through sixth-graders were using household items to concoct all types of slippery substances — from silly putty to homemade ice cream.
"This gives them a baseline for chemistry," Stanzione said. Incoming sixth-grader Rachel Sikes twisted pipe cleaner into snowflake designs to be added to the chemical borax to create a crystal effect.
"This is not something I would learn in school normally, but this is something I would like to learn," the 11-year-old said.
Next to her, fellow sixth-grader Crystal Ly flipped her pancake-shaped blob of slime onto her desk, creating a thin air bubble. "It's squishy, it's stretchy and it rips easily," she said contentedly.
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(626) 962-8811, Ext. 270 Walnut HS Solar Racer Receives YSC SupportSan Gabriel Valley Tribune The YSC presented a $500 sponsorship check to the Walnut High School QuikSolar Racing Team led by student Elliot Lee. The group is designing and building a solar car which will compete in the Dell-Winston race from Austin TX to Pasadena. The race starts on July 8 th at Dell’s corporate headquarters and ends in Pasadena on July 16 th. The entries will be on display at JPL on July 18 th. The Winston School is located in Dallas, Texas.
Ten Walnut High School students are getting their hands dirty and utilizing all of their impressive engineering and programming skills to build the car of the future. Walnut High will compete against at least eight other schools worldwide in the Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge in July. Teams will race their cars from the Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
The students involved in the projects are already well ahead of the curve. They have raised more than $10,000 and worked on the car each weekend in team leader Elliot Lee’s back yard. “We’re doing pretty well – we’ve already done the frame,” said Lee, a junior and president of the campus Technology Club. “I’ve learned a lot about welding, designing the car and aerodynamics,” he said. “The car has rechargeable batteries where it holds the solar power until we use it.” Lee heard about the race from a former Walnut student who judged the competition one year. Lee hopes to work in computer engineering in the future.
Team business manager Joseph Yeh, a junior, said he has learned a tremendous amount by handling the financial and business aspects of the project. Of the $10,000 already raised, $2,000 was use dot buy the car’s frame and motor. Yeh’s goal is to raise $25,000. “Moneywise, we’re ahead of schedule,” he said.
Students put their heads together and asked for big sponsorships from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Walnut High Associated Student Body and private educational foundations. They also sold sponsorships door-to-door.
Walnut technology teacher and race sponsor Rod Ulrich said he is amazed at what the students have accomplished so far. “They’re in charge,” Ulrich said. “We have advisers here to guide them through and do schematics and piece things together, but for the most part, they’re doing the work.”
The Dell-Winston School Solar Car Challenge was established 10 years ago to help motivate students in science and engineering. Affiliated with the Winston School in Dallas, the race teaches high school students around the world how to build roadworthy solar cars.
This year, Walnut will compete with schools from Texas, Mississippi, New York, Colorado, Minnesota and Mexico.
For more information, visit www.winstonsolar.org/race 16 Valley schools rank highBy Esther Chou
Staff Writer, San Gabriel Valley Tribun Tuesday, March 15, 2005 - Sixteen schools in the San Gabriel Valley rated among the top 10 percent in the state, according to rankings released Tuesday by the California Department of Education. Those in the top-scoring category include Grazide Elementary in Hacienda Heights, Diamond Bar High School and Oswalt Elementary in Walnut, which have performed highly in past years. Newcomers to the highest-ranking group include Oak Mesa Elementary in La Verne, Los Molinos and Wedgeworth elementary schools in Hacienda Heights and South Pointe Middle School in Walnut. The three lowest-ranking schools are Gladstone Street Elementary in Azusa, Mountain View High School in El Monte and Parkview Elementary in El Monte. On a 1-to-10 scale, with 10 being best, schools are compared to other schools statewide and to schools with similar characteristics, including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, percentage of fully credentialed teachers and average class size. The performance index is based on a number of tests, including the California Standards Test, a national standardized test, and for high schools, the California High School Exit Exam. Half the schools in Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, the largest in the Valley, increased their ranking by at least one level. Workman High School Principal Sergio Garcia boasted that his school rose two levels in the statewide ranking, from 1 to 3. "We're not working harder, we're working smarter,' Garcia said. "We need to get kids to believe in themselves that they can do this, and we need to get teachers to believe that they can do this. "This was a team effort. This is not something the principal did. This is not something the teachers did. This is something the Workman High School community did.' Like last year, schools in Walnut and Diamond Bar continue to rank 8, 9 and 10 statewide. All of the schools in the Walnut-Valley Unified School District surpassed the statewide performance target of 800 out of 1,000 points. But in similar-schools ranking, which compares each school to 100 similar schools in the state, elementary and middle schools scored below a 5. Assistant Superintendent Nancy Hogg said she can't figure out how the state determines similar schools and is unsure of the information's accuracy. "The state puts zero weight to similar schools ranking,' Hogg said. "As far as they're concerned, they don't use the data at all. It's for the press.' Schools in Azusa Unified School District went up and down in their rankings, and most did not score above a 5 in statewide or similar schools ranking. District spokeswoman Kathy Miller said the educational success if a continuous process. "We are focused on improving our educational programs and understand that there is not a quick-fix for test scores," Miller said. For Gladstone Street Elementary, which ranked 1 in both statewide and similar schools, Miller said the district is still evaluating reasons for the fall and had no further comment. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said the scores of schools ranked in the lowest percentage are rising, which he said proves efforts to help struggling schools are helping. "In this system, we're always going to have schools in the first decile,' he said. "The key is, we're seeing all boats rise, the tide is rising.' Education officials also released targets for schools' 2005 Academic Performance Index scores. The Associated Press and correspondent Conning Chu contributed to this report. Esther Chou can be reached at (626) 962-8811, Ext. 2513 , or by e-mail at
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