Summer Is Sun, Fun, Science and Math : Education: More than 20 programs at UC Irvine offer hundreds of kids a variety of hands-on learning opportunities.

Mention summer school and most kids will groan, then quietly slip off to the beach where you can’t find them.

But mention summer school to hundreds of other Orange County schoolchildren and they’ll rush happily off to math and science classes.

Larry Chrystal, who teaches math, swears it’s true. “We hear things like, ‘Do we have to go to recess?’ ” he says. “We have classes Monday through Thursday and we’ve had kids come back on Friday and say, ‘We just wanted to see if the teachers are teaching today.’ ”

While other pupils are trading their book bags for beach bags, these kids are learning about everything from cellular components to computers during more than 20 programs offered every summer at UC Irvine.

Eloy Rodriguez, the UCI professor in charge of half a dozen summer science programs says: “My philosophy is let’s find out what is working out there in the world of education. I don’t care if we have to bring in clowns to dance. That’s what we’ll do.”

One of Rodriguez’s most popular programs and the one closest to his heart is called Kids Investigating and Discovering Science (KIDS).

Last year, about 150 first- through eighth-graders from Santa Ana schools participated in the bilingual program, which Rodriguez founded four years ago. “It is really a unique and extraordinary program,” he says. “We involve undergraduates at the university and we have research faculty like myself. I have always felt that if we as scientists can’t excite them about what we are doing, then we have a major problem here.”

Rodriguez, an internationally known scientist, felt so strongly about KIDS that he put up about $8,000 of his own money to start the program, which is designed to promote interest in science among lower-income Latino children.

“I was appalled at the dropout rate, especially among Latino kids,” says Rodriguez, a professor of developmental and cell biology. “That was the seed that said to me, ‘Hey, I got to do something, and I want to do it because I am a scientist and this is what I know best.’ I don’t pretend that all these kids are going to be scientists. That is not the point of the program. I want them to learn to think.”

The program is now funded by American Honda Foundation, and kids who participate wear white lab coats, peer through microscopes, conduct experiments and learn about the cellular components of organisms.

“We make it clear that science is fun,” says Rodriguez. “You can play science, but we expect you to learn it. We bring those elements of fun, play and rigor together.”

Rodriguez says the science curriculum he developed is just a diluted version of the science curriculum offered to undergraduates at UCI. “It is simplified in the way that students can understand it,” he says. “The kids are so excited. They always talk about science at UCI and science at normal school. They love science at UCI.”

Larry Chrystal says kids get just as excited about math. Chrystal, director of the UCI California Mathematics Project, is in charge of four different summer math programs for kids and their teachers.

“We emphasize that if math education is going to be up to the quality we want in the state and in the country we need to change,” says Chrystal, who insists that learning math can be stimulating and enjoyable. “In the past, math was cut and dry, right or wrong. That’s the wrong approach.”

As an analogy, Chrystal cites the game of chess, which although played by the same set of rules can vary greatly from game to game. “There are chess rules, and no one changes the rules,” he says. “But the strategies change.”

In California, the strategy of teaching math began to change in 1982 when the statewide California Mathematics Project was established. The project offers programs for teachers interested in improving mathematics instruction from kindergarten up to the community college level.

UCI began offering intensive summer training for math teachers about eight years ago. Out of that program for teachers grew other math classes for teachers and kids. One of them is the Young Mathematicians Project, two three-week summer sessions for teachers and youngsters in grades two through 10.

The university also works with the Garden Grove Unified School District each summer to provide in-district training for teachers and children. UCI instructors travel to Garden Grove and spend four weeks working with the teachers and three weeks working with children who have been identified as having math and reading problems.

This summer, about 50 teachers and 700 children will take part in the program, which is funded by the district.

Other programs offered this summer at UCI include a four-week class for high school students interested in working in research labs and a six-week science camp that will include hands-on lessons in marine biology, engineering, space and aviation.

The university also offers a four-week Saturday program called “Saturdays for Science,” designed for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders. There’ll also be a computer camp for fifth- through ninth-graders and a pre-college program for gifted kids.

And in the field of humanities, the university offers a “Young Writers’ Program,” which is open to kids in grades two through 10. The program runs for two three-week sessions. A “Young Artists’ Program” also has been developed for grades six through nine.

Eloy Rodriguez believes that children who participate in the UCI summer programs may one day return to campus as undergraduates.

“What is important is that this connects with high schools, junior highs and elementaries,” he says. “My idea is that these kids will now go on to the junior high, then feed into high school and then into the University of California. For little kids from poor neighborhoods, this is all inspiring to them. They cannot believe they are here (on campus). But by the time they get here as undergraduates, they’ll think this is natural.”