‘Socrates’ Leads Young to Teaching

Sixth-grade teacher Robert Fields never forgot the time he asked his class where Winston Churchill was from, and a child raised his hand and said, “Rome.”

Some years later, Fields received a post card from that person, who as an adult was traveling through Italy. “P.S.,” the card said, “I can’t find a single statue of Churchill in Rome.”

The Chatsworth teacher told the story to about 50 students from five San Fernando Valley-area high schools Saturday at Cal State Northridge, calling it one of the rewards of his 22 years as an educator.

Future Teachers

The students were attending the first day of a two-day seminar called “Project Socrates,” which represents a partnership between CSUN and Pierce College that is meant to encourage the students to become teachers. They were to spend Saturday and today at CSUN immersed in lectures, films and group discussions about teaching.

“The earlier you engage students, the better you keep them,” said Philip Handler, CSUN associate dean of humanities. “This is a plan to get them excited about coming to college, and we hope after graduation, to get them into teaching.”

Pierce, a two-year community college, and CSUN, a four-year university, have worked on joint projects before, said David Wolf, president of Pierce. But he described the Socrates program, named for the Greek philosopher and teacher, as the most innovative and perhaps the most important of those projects. As the quality of public education has come under fire in recent years, the state also has faced predictions of severe teacher shortages for the next decade, Wolf said.

“The opportunity to address both of these problems, quality and quantity, seems to be here,” Wolf said.

About 70 students signed up for the first-ever project, although not all of them participated in this weekend’s two-day seminar. The response fell short of the goal of 100, but Wolf predicted the program would gain momentum in coming years.

Half Transfer

Wolf said about half, or 1,000, of Pierce College’s graduates transfer to CSUN each year after completing two-year programs. CSUN draws more students from the Los Angeles Unified School District than any college in the nation, said Carolyn Ellner, CSUN dean of education.

The Socrates participants came from Taft, Van Nuys and San Fernando high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District and from Agoura and Calabasas high schools in the Las Virgenes Unified School District. Most had just completed their junior year.

In the fall, the students will work as teaching interns in various elementary and secondary schools in addition to completing their senior year of high school. After graduation, the project provides a summer session about teaching.

San Fernando High School junior Connie Davis, 17, said she has wanted to be a teacher since she was 10 years old. “I wanted to share the knowledge I experience with all the young people I can,” she said.

Laura Supple, 17, a Van Nuys High School junior, praised her school but said part of her inspiration came from her desire to do better than teachers who were “boring” or who “didn’t care.”

“I just basically want to help kids learn again and get them to start coming back to school,” Supple said.