Learning Matters: Clark Magnet High staff members help make a difference
I recently received an email from Scholastic, a company known for school book fairs, asking if I wanted to write another column about Clark Magnet High School’s latest win in the Lexus Scholastic Eco Challenge. I last wrote about the team and its streak of wins a little over a year ago.
“Yes!” I replied, happy for another reason to visit Domenique Evans-Bye’s environmental global information systems class at Clark. Her students’ eight years of winning entries in the nationwide environmental science contest say a lot about her strengths as a teacher and the effectiveness of project-based learning.
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They also say something about Doug Dall, the principal who hired Evans-Bye, and about Jim Brown, the superintendent who hired Dall as the founding principal of Clark.
Brown served as superintendent from 1996 to 2003. Dall will be leaving the district after 36 years, 18 of them at Clark. A look back at 1996-98 helps bring Dall’s legacy and Evans-Bye’s winning teams into perspective.
When Brown came to Glendale, the district had entered the era of school reform with a strategic plan that was built on the California education report “Second to None.”
His arrival coincided with the statewide roll-out of class-size reduction and the consequent appearance of bungalows edging out elementary playgrounds all across the district — even after nearly half the elementary schools had converted to year-round education to accommodate a wave of immigration.
With high school populations bursting at the seams — 3,600 students at Glendale High and 3,200 at Hoover — Brown didn’t take too long to call for committees to consider facilities’ needs and “what to do with the high schools.”
The facilities committee led to the successful 1997 Measure K school-bond campaign. The high school task force eventually recommended reopening the long-closed Clark Junior High as a magnet high school.
According to the task force report, “Advanced technologies could provide career-path programs in fields such as computer science, technology applications, animation and graphics, computer-assisted design, business and finance and management information systems. The science theme could provide career paths in engineering, aerospace, etc.”
I called my friend and former school board colleague Mary Boger at her home in Massachusetts to get her perspective on Clark’s beginnings. She was president of the Glendale Council PTA at the time and co-chair of Measure K. Recalling Dall’s role in the high school task force, she said, “I think Doug came into the committee with the vision.”
In another phone conversation, Jim Brown echoed Boger’s comments. “What Doug brought to the project was an interest in technology and an understanding that this wasn’t the old vocational education. This was career education with a strong academic component.”
Brown knew Dall had taught industrial arts, including wood shop, technical theater, desktop publishing, and computer-assisted design before becoming an administrator, and he also had experience as a journalist.
Brown spoke of additional qualities that led him to select Dall as principal. “He had a real passion for that job…. The difference between good and great is passion,” Brown said. He also said Dall, too, looked for passion in the people he hired.
Dall spotted such a passion in Evans-Bye when they both taught scuba-diving at Sport Chalet, and he encouraged her to pursue a teaching credential in her field of environmental science. It wasn’t long before she joined the staff at Clark, where she inspires her students with her love of scientific inquiry.
This year, her students researched the decline in the rockfish population, mapped it and presented their findings to panels of scientists. They went on to build and advocate the use of special cages to safely return “catch-and-release” rockfish to their natural depths, preventing unnecessary deaths from barotrauma among a species that can live as long as 250 years.
The team also researched and promoted consumption of a protein source more sustainable than fish. They suggested crickets.
“The hardest thing was getting regular people to eat crickets,” project manager Sipan Nazaryan told me. But he and his teammates, including fellow Clark senior David Ghukasyan, persevered, and they eagerly shared how much they gained from their experience.
“This class made other classes seem dull,” Nazaryan said. “Learning statistics is just learning statistics. This is making an impact.”
Doug Dall and Domenique Evans-Bye, along with many of the other staff at Clark, have been making an impact on students for a long time. Congratulations and thanks to them both for their years of dedication to the “Second to None” vision. Thanks also to Lexus and Scholastic for their commitment to the cause — not to mention all the prize money won by students year after year.
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JOYLENE WAGNER is a past member of the Glendale Unified School Board. Email her at jkate4400@aol.com.
