Teacher’s Example Really Earthshaking

Little did San Gabriel Valley teacher Patrick Smolenski know that the lesson he had prepared for his Earth science class last Thursday would be so timely.

Soon after the earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale struck, the few students who had not gone home in Smolenski’s eighth-grade class at Jefferson Intermediate School in San Gabriel settled down to a lesson about the causes of all that shaking and rumbling that began at 7:42 Thursday morning. And on Friday, when most of the rest of his class returned to school, he repeated the lesson, which was enhanced by models and diagrams of the Earth’s layers and fault lines.

“It was as if the earthquake set the stage for what I wanted them to know,” said Smolenski, who began teaching this year.

Not all teachers were able to take advantage of the quake to the extent that Smolenski did. But in schools across Los Angeles County on Friday, teachers taught about earthquakes, hoping, in the process, to help relieve students’ lingering anxiety.

“Just knowing what happened made me feel better,” said one of Smolenski’s students, Julie Carney, 13, who said she had curled into a ball on the sidewalk on her way to school Thursday when the quake occurred.

Smolenski’s school survived the quake relatively unscathed, apparently suffering only some minor damage to a gymnasium wall. Other San Gabriel Valley schools that experienced problems severe enough to warrant canceling a day of classes are expected to resume normal activities on Monday, according to the office of the county superintendent of schools.

Of the closed schools, only Whittier High School, close to the epicenter of the quake, will not reopen until Tuesday because of a major cleanup effort needed there, a county spokeswoman said.

Most of the 600 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District were open Friday, and the 60 campuses--primarily on the Eastside--that were closed for cleanup and repairs will reopen Monday, a district spokesman said.

Many Los Angeles schools reported substantially lower-than-normal attendance Friday, with attendance at some schools down as much as 60%.

“I know there is still a lot of fear,” Glassell Park Elementary School Principal Herbert Leong said Friday, “because the children who are here are still talking about it (the quake) and how frightened they are. They keep saying, ‘When is the next one?’ So we’re trying to let them know that school is a safe place and that we’re all here for them and that mommy is at home and daddy is OK.”

At Chandler Elementary School in Van Nuys, children in primary grades were encouraged to draw pictures about the earthquake, and Principal Al Cortes said he was encouraging teachers to “make sure the kids do talk about it if they need to.”

Produced a Graph

At San Gabriel Avenue Elementary School in South Gate, students in Joyce Rems’ fifth-grade class combined talking about the temblor with a math lesson, making a graph from information students collected about how many of them were “frightened, worried or curious,” Principal David R. Abernethy said.

At a magnet school on the Westside, sixth-grader JaNae Jamison brought in a large plastic bag containing a home-made earthquake survival kit her mother assembled last year. In it were a carton of punch, a box of raisins, a bag of dried fruit, and some nuts--enough provisions to last a hungry 11-year-old at least until recess.

The bag also held a flashlight, a pocket-size emergency blanket made of space-age material that works off radiated body heat, and a reassuring letter from her mother. The handwritten letter, to be opened in case of a quake, told JaNae, “Don’t worry or get upset because you know daddy and I (are) standing in a traffic line . . . (coming) to get you . . . and we will be together soon.” It was signed “Love, Mommie.”

JaNae, who attends the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies and was at home when the earthquake struck, said she keeps the kit in a kitchen cupboard but now is thinking of making one to store at school as well.

‘Great’ Idea

The principal of her school, Marion Collins, said the kit is “an idea we think is great” and plans to encourage teachers to adopt the quake care packages as a class project.

Smolenski, the San Gabriel teacher, told his students Friday that earthquakes are “an end product, not the cause of the problem.” Using his model, he showed them how plates beneath the Earth’s surface shift after building up pressure. He drew diagrams of epicenters and explained what aftershocks were.

He also told his pupils that quakes such as the one that sent people scrambling for cover on Thursday can serve a positive purpose by alerting them to the precautions that they can take.

“When the next one comes,” said one of his students, 13-year-old David Copeland, “I won’t be so scared.”

Times staff writers Barry Stavro and Gregory Crouch contributed to this story.