CAMARILLO : Area Teachers Get a Peek Into Future

At a workshop Tuesday designed to show 21st Century educational techniques to Ventura County teachers, a group of second-grade science teachers looked into the future and saw . . . a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich.

The sandwich was really a geology lesson in disguise. The rye bread represented the Earth’s crust, the jelly was molten rock, the peanut butter the planet’s gooey mantle, the raisins and nuts representing rocks and boulders.

After learning the lesson, of course, the students could eat it.

“The idea is to get students excited about science,” said Wendy Rasmussen, a Santa Maria elementary school teacher who led the class.

In the coming millennium, textbooks will be avoided in favor of hands-on teaching methods, said Diana Rigby, a curriculum coordinator with the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools, which sponsored the two-day workshops at Camarillo High School.

“Teaching will be focused on student participation,” Rigby said. “It will be student-centered, not textbook-driven.”

About 450 elementary school teachers, mostly from Ventura County, attended the voluntary workshops, paying from $75 to $200 apiece to learn what the conference brochure described as “math and science for the 21st Century.”

Several other workshops are planned for other sites in Ventura County during the school year, Rigby said.

But many teachers in the county do not attend the workshops, Rigby said, adding, “Some teachers teach the same way forever.”