Innovative Science Program Draws Kids Like a Magnet : Education: Field trips, lab sessions at Santa Monica College make the subject anything but dull for sixth-graders.

The new science magnet program at John Adams Middle School in Santa Monica not only offers an enriched science curriculum, it also guarantees its students will go to college.

Through a special arrangement between John Adams and its across-the-street neighbor, Santa Monica College, 68 curious 11-year-olds take over the science laboratories during college semester breaks. They conduct experiments using Bunsen burners, graduated cylinders and stereoscopes. Best of all, they are taught by a real-live college professor; this year, the instructor is earth science professor William Selby.

John Adams Principal Jerry Kantor, who described the partnership as unique, said it is helping to make the magnet program, launched at the beginning of the school year, a success.

“Certainly the scientific environment at the college is higher than what we have to offer,” Kantor said. “I want (students) to have all the experiences of a middle school program plus . . . the chance to go beyond that.”

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education gave Kantor $60,000 and the go-ahead to start the program last fall with two sixth-grade classes. Santa Monica College, located across the street, agreed to contribute about $12,000 in professor salary costs, plus an undetermined amount for the use of equipment and supplies.

In the beginning, Kantor said he wanted to take advantage of having a college nearby and hoped to start just one science magnet class. After getting a flood of applications, however, he decided to start two. He hopes to add two classes each year until there are a total of six magnet classes, two per grade from sixth through eighth grade.

While priority is given to applicants living within the school district, students who live outside Santa Monica also are encouraged to apply, Kantor said. They must receive a release permit from their school district in order to attend.

The “school within a school” has three goals: to provide an enriched science curriculum for highly motivated students; to attract more Anglo students to a campus where two-thirds of the students are from ethnic minority groups, and to inspire minority students to seek careers in science.

Magnet students mix with regular students for most of the school day, but they come together for the enriched class. The rest of the school district requires sixth graders to take a science class for half a year. The John Adams magnet requires a full year of science, including extended classes twice a week.

Teacher Linda Cady, coordinator of the magnet program, embraces innovative teaching methods that are hallmarks of the education reform movement taking root across the nation.

To supplement textbook instruction, Cady and colleague Shirley Tarpley take students on field trips to such places as Morro Bay, Big Tujunga Canyon and Wrightwood. They bring in speakers from aerospace firms and universities.

Cady tries to teach students how to ask questions and search for answers, how to form hypotheses and set out to prove them. She said she tries to avoid the traditional, book-heavy approach to science, which she said may be responsible for making children think science is dull.

“These kids do not have a mind set,” she said. “All they are is fascinated.”

Students are graded on performance. Cady might ask students to pick an element and explain its properties in order to test their understanding of how the periodic table of elements works.

Recently, she asked students to build atomic models, using imaginative materials that illustrate what the element means to them. One student, she recalled, picked calcium and used a milk carton for the nucleus, and bits of fake cheese for orbiting electrons.

Students say the approach is different and fun.

“We get to do a lot of things most students don’t get to do,” said Carlos Huizar, 11. Huizar said he especially enjoyed the field trips. “We were in school away from school. We got to see, not just read from a book.”

Students in Cady’s class sit in groups of three facing each other. The room is noisy with scientific, but spirited, discussion.

The students do not necessarily view themselves as career scientists. Huizar wants to study law. Sam Mebasser is an aspiring architect. He recently did a project on how to control how much sunlight enters a home by adjusting the shades. It required calculating the angles at which sunlight strikes the earth at different times of day during different seasons.

“You use science in architecture,” he said, matter-of-factly.

Selby said he enjoys teaching the magnet students because they are excited about learning.

“The curiosity that kids have makes them great scientists,” he said. “Somehow, on the way to high school and college, that curiosity seems to get turned off. We’re catching these kids at just the right time.”

Selby said he must often remind himself he is dealing with children with limited life experiences. Examples like “Say you are driving down the street in a car,” he noted, don’t apply.

Principal Kantor said science laboratories should be completed on the Adams campus by next winter, but he still hopes to keep a close relationship with the college. The college in return uses John Adams facilities during non-school hours for parking, football practice and summer school.

“It’s good for our kids to be on a college campus,” he said. “They start to get the feeling they belong there. This is just the beginning.”