WOODLAND HILLS : Parents Share Skills, Hobbies With Students

He Kyung Choi sat with one leg curled on the floor and the other held straight up in the air, balanced by her outstretched arm. A dozen fifth-graders sat facing her, giggling and grimacing in mock pain.

“You’re younger than me. You can do that,” the 35-year-old mother of two said to her giddy young charges as she pulled her leg higher.

“Kiss your knee,” she said.

“Owwwww, ahhhhh, aaaaauuuuuugggggghhhh,” echoed in the tiny classroom.

“What a bunch of complainers,” Ilene Meyers, principal of Lockhurst Drive School, said from the room’s open doorway, before walking away, smiling, from the Taekwondo lesson.

Taekwondo, cake decorating, typing--these are some of the subjects Lockhurst fifth-graders are learning in a monthlong session of Discovery School, when parents come to the school to teach their professions and hobbies.

Each semester, kids in one grade of the kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school attend four hourlong classes taught by somebody’s mom or dad. The number of topics depends on how many parents volunteer. This semester, the students chose from seven subjects.

“The kids just love it,” Meyers said. “They get an experience they don’t get during regular school.”

The program also gets parents involved in the school, she said.

“They’re usually a little frightened at first,” Meyers said. “They’re usually amazed at how receptive these kids are.”

In an upstairs classroom, 10-year-old Becky Silberman was poised with a paper tube of neon orange frosting, just waiting to squeeze out a gooey little pumpkin.

“I love it. It’s fun,” she said as she waited for instructor Cathie Mussell to make her way to the table.

Next door, professional photographer Jeffrey Mayer, who has captured images of stars including Michael Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and the rock group Poison, flipped through his portfolio, explaining lighting techniques.

Outside, glamour gave way to grit as students were getting plants into the ground and dirt under their fingernails.

The students, when offered options on what to plant, chose broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, “all the things they don’t usually eat,” said West Hills resident Lynne Kelley, one of three moms supervising the garden class. “We’ll see if they eat them when they’re all done.”