L.A. Harbor Becomes a Teaching Resource : Education: Curriculum developed by school district and port officials focuses on social science, economics and history of the area.

To most kids who live near Los Angeles’ man-made harbor, Banning is but a high school and Wilmington the community it serves.

But, as harbor-area children soon will learn, the names Banning and Wilmington are steeped in history.

Phineas T. Banning settled in the area in 1851, developed the harbor, helped build a railroad and named the 640 acres he bought Wilmington in honor of his hometown, Wilmington, Del.

Such tidbits will be included in a new course developed by officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District and World Port LA designed to enlighten children living in San Pedro and Wilmington--and ultimately the whole district--to the harbor’s history.

The World Port LA Curriculum Supplement, which will be introduced next month, will include math, geography, science, history and social science lessons for kindergarten through sixth grade.

“Teachers are always looking for ways to make their curriculum come alive,” said Amelia McKenna, an assistant superintendent of instruction and Wilmington native who helped develop the curriculum.

And with the port, McKenna said, “We have a valuable resource in our back yard.”

“My kids could literally look out the classroom and see a crane,” said Suzanne Galindo, a Wilmington teacher who worked on the curriculum. “But they didn’t know what it was.”

World Port LA, the marketing name for the Port of Los Angeles, funded the curriculum task force and is printing copies of the new course for 80 teachers in 22 harbor-area schools. District officials may expand it to all elementary schools--and later to higher grades--depending on the response from students and teachers in the pilot schools.

World Port LA spokesman Dennis McCarbery said the agency approached the school district with the idea early last year, convinced that the port could serve as a backdrop for any subject on any level.

McKenna then solicited the support of principals and teachers in the harbor area for help in developing the curriculum.

Volunteer Suzanne Galindo, a teacher at Hawaiian Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington, said the lessons created by the port curriculum task force incorporate “hands-on” experience.

“Import Investigator,” for instance, a lesson aimed at teaching students how busy the port is, will have students identify where items in the classroom, such as computers, cassette players, televisions and office supplies, were manufactured. They will also look at the labels on their clothes to see where they were made.

After identifying the locations of the countries on the map, the class will discuss how items like cars and computers are shipped from the port in Tokyo to Los Angeles.

Other lessons will teach children the workings of the port and how ships are unloaded.

After a test run of the material over the past few weeks, Galindo said her fifth-graders learned much about the port.

“Now they know that cranes pick up things from all over the world,” she said. “They know that it’s a ‘container crane’ that takes the containers off the ships, and the cranes are different colors, depending on the company that owns it.”

The course will be taught in chronological order, beginning with the settlement of the area and then on to the birth of the port and modernization of the harbor.

Lessons on social science and the economy will come out of a look at the birth and death of the cannery industry.

And there will be plenty of history: from the Yang-Na Indians who lived in the hills off San Pedro Bay, to Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino who arrived in 1602, and Banning, who planted the seeds of industrialization in the area.

It was Vizcaino who gave the area around the harbor San Pedro, in honor of St. Peter of Alexandria.

And part of the curriculum is devoted to acting out the fight Banning had with Henry Huntington in 1870 over the destination--San Pedro or Santa Monica--of the Southern Pacific Railroad, which decided the location of the harbor.

Banning won, and his legacy endures not only in the harbor but in two lighthouses, at Point Fermin and Angels Gate, which he built to guide ships to port.

“Banning shaped the harbor community and the future of Los Angeles,” Galindo said. For the kids to see that somebody in their own neighborhood impacted the whole city, maybe when they grow up they can leave a similar legacy to their children.”