Kitty Corner : There’s More Than One Way to Put C-A-T in Education

Most teachers stuff their classroom lesson plans into a desk drawer at the end of the school day.

Barbara Cser says she stores hers in a litter box.

That’s because cats help her teach reading, writing and arithmetic to fourth- and fifth-graders at her Glassell Park schoolroom.

The 9- and 10-year-olds are learning science by studying the animals’ superior eyesight. They talk about feline symbolism in social studies. They discuss cat poetry and read cat books in language arts. They measure cat sizes and ponder cat statistics in math.

The unusual curriculum is the classroom equivalent of building a better mousetrap, officials at Fletcher Drive Elementary School say. Cats seem to capture children’s imagination and add unexpected excitement to geography, anatomy and literature, according to Principal Mary Shambra.

“All of us were surprised at how beautifully cats lend themselves as an educational vehicle,” she said. “It’s an ideal way to teach.”

The kitty curriculum evolved two months after a theatrical production company offered Cser’s pupils free tickets to tonight’s Los Angeles opening of the musical “Cats.” The show’s two-week run at the Shubert Theatre in Century City marks its 10th local engagement.

Cser pounced on the ticket offer.

When she discovered that none of the pupils in her mostly Latino classroom had ever attended a professionally staged play, she set out to prepare them by having them study T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”

The youngsters responded enthusiastically to Eliot’s work, which is the basis for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. So Cser quickly rounded up every other book she could find on cat lore and cat history from the library and wrote a check to buy more than $100 worth of others at a bookstore.

Then she drew up a complete study guide based on the cat theme.

Cat literature fit nicely into her English-as-a-second language lessons, Cser found. Cat domestication turned out to be something that could be depicted in bar graphs. Cats also easily blended into lessons involving vocabulary, ecology, American geography, history and folk tales.

Nearly 75 cat books line shelves and tables in Room 20, which is decorated with cat posters and cat cutouts and giant pairs of cat eyes that stare down from the walls. The children have memorized the words and music to two show tunes from “Cats,” and they have planned a short show of their own for parents on Thursday. As an art project, they designed their own cat-themed invitations for the grown-ups.

Members of the touring “Cats” troupe also plan to visit the classroom Thursday to see what the children have done for themselves.

“We often do workshops in elementary schools. But I’ve never heard of anyone doing what they have done,” said actress Joyce Chittick.

It’s made school very interesting, too, according to the students in Room 20.

“I liked learning about cat bones,” said 9-year-old Erick Burciaga, a fourth-grader who said he has been motivated to read 12 of the cat books. “I might be a doctor when I grow up--if I’m not a fireman.”

But the kitty course has about run its course, according to Cser. After this week, cat decorations will come down and pilgrim decorations will go up as she returns to her regular curriculum.

“You know, I really don’t like cats,” she whispered.