The Yearning for Learning : Summer Students Find Out About Problems They’ll Face in the Future

With 20 pairs of eyes glued on her, teacher Carol Radford of the San Diego Natural History Museum dripped water through cotton-ball “clouds” suspended on blue nylon mesh that spanned across a miniature-sized city.

A group of first- and second-graders enrolled in the museum’s “Nature’s House” course craned their necks to see the water drop on “magic paper” held by Radford. The “magic paper”--actually litmus paper--measured the water’s acidity.

It was all part of a hands-on lesson designed to introduce these youngsters to a problem that may well plague them in the years to come: acid rain.

When Radford poured water through “clean” clouds--those suspended over the model’s countryside--the litmus test detected no acid.

But when the exercise was repeated a second time, with the clouds soaked with vinegar-laced water to simulate air pollution, the litmus paper rapidly changed colors, bringing forth “oohs” and “aahs” by the children--a sure sign that Wednesday’s lesson had done its job.

“Now what causes acid to get in the air?” Radford asked her class.

“Pollution,” they said.

“And what does acid rain do?

“It hurts plants and animals,” the children replied in chorus.

The use of “magic paper” and a model environment filled with toy cars, planes and buildings is just one example of creative teaching techniques used in a multitude of programs offered by various Balboa Park institutions this summer.

The Natural History Museum, the San Diego Junior Theatre, the International Aerospace Hall of Fame, among others, have been offering summer programs to the city’s youth--from toddlers to high school seniors--that are not only fun, but also complement what they learn during the regular school year. At most of the institutions, classes run through August.

“Teachers during the school year are so much busier because they’re handling so many more kids, and they just don’t have the time to do stuff like this,” said Radford, who has a master’s degree in education and has been teaching at the museum for seven years.

“The most important thing these children learn is that environmental problems aren’t some abstract notion from a complicated science textbook,” she said in describing “Nature’s House”--a $38 course explaining the interaction of nature’s three major elements: air, soil and water.

“We try to make them realize that even in their very young lives, every action they perform has a consequence . . . that their actions affect the delicate balance of nature,” Radford said. “For example, every time they nag their moms to drive them down the street, they now know that their car is contributing to the amount of pollution in the air.”

Rapid-Growth Problems

In their weeklong classes lasting two hours each day, Radford’s 20 students developed their version of “America’s Finest City” from a model ecosphere complete with an ocean, mountains, lakes and rivers.

The children cleared the forest from their model environment and in its place built a thriving city: skyscrapers lined the coastline, planes dotted the airport, cars lined newly paved roads.

But these first- and second-graders learned quickly that rapid waste comes from rapid growth.

“So where are we going to put our garbage?” Radford asked. One of her students pushed a toy dump truck around and around their city in search of a suitable site. Unable to find such an area, the youngster dumped the garbage into the city’s lake.

“It wasn’t the greatest of solutions,” Radford said, “but at least the kids are learning about problems confronting our community . . . the same ones the City Council is grappling with.”

Carole Ziegler, who sat in on the class, was delighted that her 6-year-old son, Matthew, was getting a preview of the complex problems bound to be issues of the future.

“I’ve taught environmental courses at (San Diego State University) and will be teaching at (University of San Diego) this fall,” said Ziegler, a Mission Hills resident.

“I’ve tried teaching college kids about environmental problems and a lot of them can’t pick it up,” she said. “You worry sometimes that they’ve buried their heads in the ground like ostriches . . . (but here) it’s obvious they’re absorbing stuff. My son came home the other day and around dinner time explained to the whole family how we all use oxygen.”

Youngsters on Stage

Aaron Sander, 7, when asked whether the museum classes will help him in school beginning in September, replied, “Oh, yeah!”

With such a booming voice, Aaron may just as well have been enrolled in classes at the San Diego Junior Theatre--across the street from the museum.

“We are not here to produce professional actors, although many of our students do decide to pursue a career in the theater,” said Robin Stevens, the theater’s artistic director.

“What we do teach is how to be assertive and how to express yourself. Whether you are an engineer, a doctor, a lawyer or whatever, sooner or later, there is going to come a time when you want to talk about something with conviction . . . something that you really care about that you’ll like to address.”

He watched his students, who had just finished dancing and singing in a production of “The Wizard of Oz,” mill about backstage dripping in sweat, praising not only the acting but also the light and scenery work of those students behind the curtain. “I think they also really learn the meaning of teamwork,” he said.

“Most of our students have been with us for four or five years and have put on shows for the umpteenth time,” said Jennifer Nash, the theater’s school director. “They’ve practically grown up with the theater. A lot of them keep in touch once they leave.”

Jim Ponichtera, 19, last year’s Tin Man, is one of them.

“I was painfully shy before I got involved with (the theatre),” said Ponichtera, a Yale University sophomore studying theater and philosophy. He returned this summer to work as a teacher’s assistant.

“Through acting, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of self-confidence. I spent four years at JT, but I wish I had started earlier. I think the programs are even more important because so many art and theater programs are being underemphasized and underfunded in the public schools.”

Not for Everyone

But at $120 for a two-week session at Junior Theatre, the program is not available to everyone--especially those children who come from low-income families.

“We have always wanted to extend our programs to all kids,” Nash said. “It’s a direction we realize we must head for in the future. There have been a couple of possibilities discussed, for example, placing a satellite of the Junior Theatre into the heart of low-income communities. But the problem, as always, is finding the funding for such a program.”

The Junior Theatre has free use of a stage from the city and is financially independent, Nash said. The difficult struggle for independence is achieved through tuition, ticket revenue, contributions and fund-raisers. That leaves little money for recruiting underprivileged children, Nash said.

Many of the park’s institutions faced similar constraints on bringing inner-city children to their programs. The summer courses offered range in price from $8 one-day workshops to $120 two-week sessions.

The summer sessions administered by the International Aerospace Hall of Fame (IAHF) have no such worries.

The hall of fame offers five one-week programs free of charge to students from fifth through ninth grade during the summer through a grant from the Reuben H. Fleet Foundation, said IAHF spokesman John Roche. The emphasis is on introducing students to an aerospace career.

And its success only emphasizes the need for similar cost-free programs, Roche said.

“The program started in its current format last year with 84 students,” Roche said. “Now we have more than 250. We passed around brochures in the city and county school districts, and in churches, in the first week of May. By the end of the month our classes were completely filled up.”

Whets Appetites

“The program is designed to whet appetites in the aerospace field,” said instructor Bill Trumble, an avid model builder and a teacher at Twin Peaks Middle School in Poway. “It gives them just enough background in the subject for the motivation to continue on.”

But this program, like others throughout the park, isn’t designed to make students slave over books.

“I don’t think you can make it too tough (with books and tests),” Trumble said. “You have to remember it’s tough to get kids to stay in for a long time during the summer.”

With that in mind, Trumble takes his students on field trips to nearby aviation facilities, including Miramar Naval Air Station.

After viewing real planes, he lets them try their hand in aerospace design.

“We give the kids a chance to fabricate an aircraft of their own design out of Styrofoam,” Trumble said. “We get some interesting designs. One boy built a plane loaded with far more rockets and missiles then it could possibly ever carry. But that’s OK, because they don’t have to be realistic. I think its good for these kids to use their imagination and use their creativity.”

By participating in such programs, Trumble said these students also get access to the exhibits in the IAHF and to its libraries, where they get a chance to learn about aviation greats like Charles Lindbergh, the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart.

“At the Hall of Fame we honor those people who had a dream,” he said. “And when I look at these kids when they look up with fascination at the airplanes (in the IAHF), I can see that the dream is still alive in them as well.”