Science Camp Is Tranquillity Base : South-Central Los Angeles Youths Savor Beach

Ten-year-old Wendy Arias colored the moon, launched a rocket, drafted blueprints for the space shuttle, studied the sunrise, picked up seashells and practiced flying an airplane Thursday.

All before lunch.

“It’s more fun here than going to school; it’s better right here,” said a smiling Wendy, one of 60 fifth-graders from South-Central Los Angeles who have spent the past three days camping out at Doheny State Beach. “They don’t smoke here that much, no people stealing, there’s no drunk drivers. Here there’s a lot of trees, we’re in the sun, near the beach.”

Next to Wendy on the picnic bench, Jenika Sears looked up from plotting points on a graph to add: “It’s quiet at night, no gangsters, no shooting. . . . It’s better than home!”

For many of the students, the outdoor science camp organized by their teacher at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School and a Doheny ranger was their first night sleeping away from home. Their first visit to a state park or, they said, to any park that is not the turf of drug dealers, gang members and homeless people. It was also their first chance to sleep in a tent, stare at stars away from the city, or see the sun rise over the sand.

Some touched the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

“It makes science alive! It’s not a theory now, it’s life,” said Wadsworth teacher Patricia Atlow.

“Look at this. They can’t do this in Los Angeles. There’s no space,” Atlow said as the children roared around the campgrounds, testing their paper airplane wings and shooting off rockets. “They see the waves coming in rather than reading about it. It’s part of their life experience now. It’s real now. They know what it looks like, they know what it feels like.”

Long a science lover, Atlow met Doheny Ranger Brad Heitzman last summer at NASA’s space camp for teachers and students in Huntsville, Ala. Heitzman, who teaches science part time at Culverdale Elementary School in Irvine, suggested that Atlow bring her students down to Doheny.

Atlow just laughed, explaining that at Wadsworth, a school a few blocks east of the Coliseum where 85% of the children qualify for free lunches, field trips are rare. To teach oceanography, she had always lugged sand and sea water into the classroom.

Where would they get money for a bus?

But Heitzman designed a curriculum anyhow. And Atlow wrote up a grant proposal. Last month, Rockwell International, the Seal Beach-based company that had paid for Atlow and Heitzman to attend space camp in the first place, offered $3,000 to underwrite the program. The Doheny Longboard Assn. loaned tents and other equipment.

Soon, permission slips were signed and the children were headed south.

“They need so many experiences. It’s not the same to look at TV or read a book,” said Wadsworth Principal Maggie Guajardo, who has worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for nearly 30 years. “I know we try to tell the children you can go anywhere and do anything through a book, but it’s not the same as hands-on.”

Hands-on indeed.

Upon arriving Wednesday, they went on a nature hike, peering at native plants and identifying various species of birds. After building a miniature space shuttle and viewing a NASA video, they gathered around the campfire, singing a creative version of Manfred Mann’s “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy”: “There she was, just a-campin’ on the beach . . . “

They slept in tents pitched on grass within the sound of the surf.

Thursday morning, they made models showing the phases of the moon, tested the aerodynamics of plane wings, and launched paper and plastic rockets. After lunch, they marveled at a life-size sand sculpture of a whale, visited the San Juan Capistrano mission and even dissected sharks and squid.

“We’re learning about what the birds eat!” Jenika squealed.

“We learned about the astronauts and how they went to space,” added John Price.

“And we learn about how the Earth is,” Jenika continued.

“And we learn about the animals in the tide pool,” remembered John.

And, they said together, “How the starfish feels!”

Laced with lessons about history, environmental responsibility, marine biology, the solar system, ecology and math, the three-day adventure amounted to around-the-clock learning.

“Science is life. It’s everything. . . . Wherever children are, they need to be able to interact with nature,” Atlow said as she sat in the crisp sunshine Thursday, imagining a program in which every student from Los Angeles and Orange counties would attend a similar outdoor camp.

The students sure hope so. They reveled in the ocean, flitted from station to station to try all the experiments.

And the verdict on the best part of science camp was all but unanimous: No homework.