BETTER THAN BURT: Fifth-grade teacher Deborah Wright...

BETTER THAN BURT: Fifth-grade teacher Deborah Wright at Greentree Elementary in Irvine participates in her class’s projects. One resulted in a letter to the writers of TV’s “Evening Shade,” inviting them to come talk about script writing. . . . “I never dreamed I’d hear back from them,” she says. She did though. Two of them will be there today. And what if the show’s star, Burt Reynolds, shows up too? “That would be great, but really, we are more interested in what the students can learn about writing.”