This High School Program Comes With Training and a Check

JOB SKILLS FOR SENIORS: Six Redondo Union High School seniors are reporting to work at Southern California Edison this semester through a program designed to give them experience while earning school credits and minimum-wage salaries.

The students--David Touchtone, Yvonne Fernandez, Gus Medrano, Danny Vigueras, Lela Sanchezand Traci Young--have completed enough class units to allow them to have the afternoons off to participate in the utility company’s Job Skills Partnership program.

They take school classes in the morning and report to work at the public utilities company after lunch.

“This is a marvelous opportunity for students to get hands-on experience in an industrial setting, get work experience credit and have the opportunity to work in a big company,” said Marcee Ferris, school vice principal.

The yearlong program will rotate the students through six-week intervals in five work areas: maintenance, operations, technical, warehouse and administration. The students will also have the opportunity to work during school holidays if they wish.

The students are assigned a mentor who trains them and assigns them job duties.

“We are trying to give the students competitive skills and self-confidence to know they can be successful,” said Jerry Berquist, manager at SCE’s Redondo Beach plant. The program is also meant to serve as an incentive for the students to stay in school, he said.

To be a part of the program, the students completed a job application and passed a drug test, aptitude test and interview.

“This is a taste of real life,” Berquist said, adding that the students will even pay union dues.

SE HABLA ESPANOL: Kindergarten through third-grade teachers in William Anderson, F.D. Roosevelt and William Green Elementary schools in Lawndale are beefing up on their Spanish this year to prepare for a project designed to integrate young Spanish-speaking students into the English language curriculum.

The teachers are honing their Spanish language skills to be able to implement the program, Project Bridges, in March, 1993.

The goal of the program is to strengthen the student’s self-esteem and academic progress in their native language while teaching them English, said Shirley Giltzow, director of federal and state projects for the district. The school hopes to integrate the students into an English-speaking classroom by the third grade.

The district received a three-year federal grant for a commitment of about $175,000 a year to implement the program. The money will be used to train the teachers for the program and buy supplies.

The current English curriculum integrates reading, writing and spelling, Giltzow said. The students read books and then create different endings for them using their writing skills. They also are tested for spelling. The district would like to do the same thing in Spanish, Giltzow said.

SCIENCE, ANYONE? Students at North Torrance High School are experimenting in a new, state-of-the-art science lab.

With a $50,000 grant donated by Toyota Motor Sales, USA, the school has purchased two 27-inch television monitors, eight MacIntosh computers, a printer, an interactive video system with a laser disk library, an overhead projection system, 35 new microscopes and a micro-video projector that can transfer images from a microscope to a video monitor.

“This equipment makes science alive and real for the students,” Principal Peggy Tremayne said. “Students learn at their own rate with immediate assistance. It also helps the teacher who cannot get to every student.”

Michael Rattelmeier, a junior at North High who plans on becoming a doctor, said the new equipment makes scientific processes more real.

“The laser disk player shows videos on protein synthesis, respiration and how a cell divides. The most we could watch without it is still pictures of certain steps in the process,” he said.

Items for the weekly Class Notes column can be mailed to The Times South Bay office, 23133 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 200, Torrance 90505, or faxed to (310) 373-5753 to the attention of staff reporter Lorna Fernandes.