Teachers Know Tricks to Make a Point Clearly : A pair from Fillmore High advised the pollution control district on a project that produced a video on air quality.

I hang around with librarians and teachers. My wife is getting suspicious. It’s not what you think--she was wondering why I don’t hang out with politicians and grunge bands like a real journalist.

She challenged me the other night when I went off to hang around with 150 local science teachers at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. So I had to confess my secret. “They know things,” I said, “and they know tricks for keeping their audiences’ interest.”

She was puzzled by this, so I gave her a for instance. Say I’m trying to explain something complicated in my column, such as air pollution. Well, a veteran teacher--or reference librarian--will ponder a minute and describe something to me the way Dennis Lang, a Channel Islands High School teacher, did last week.

“To explain air pollution, try going out in something like a school parking lot, put a clean white sock on the exhaust of a regular bus and also a natural gas one if it’s available, and have the driver idle it for five minutes,” Lang said.

My eyes widened as I contemplated the contrasting results--simple as black and white, so to speak.

This wonderfully wicked application of the old advertising idea of showing white socks before and after they’ve been washed with Whammo, Blammo or Bleecho makes for an unforgettable mental impression. Alternative-fuel vehicles, of course, put 90% less filth into the air. And our county’s air, by the way, fails to meet national health standards one day in 10 annually.

But do you think any politician--even an environmental politician--could explain what’s happening more vividly than Lang did?

He and his colleague, Debra Bereki, a science teacher at Fillmore High School, described how some local kids performed such an experiment as part of a Project Clean Air program organized by the Ventura County Air Pollution Control District. Punning with chemical symbols in the Periodic Table of the Elements, Bereki said the experiment “NOx your SOx off”--a reference to nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides.

These folks were advisers to the pollution-control district as it developed its newest public education project. You see, our local officials are as smart as I am. They went to talk to some teachers, too. I get ideas for columns and the public servants get tips on how to keep us from turning our county’s air into L.A.’s.

The results of the district’s project were a terrific video about our county’s future--with a narration by none other than Leonard Nimoy--plus a teacher’s guide and a neat little paperback called “The Little Air Quality Book.” The video and the book are in Spanish and English, by the way--another practice teachers and librarians understand--and are available for use by schools and service clubs.

The sock stunt is one of many in the teacher’s guide, and the paperback is full of tips, such as calling (800) 559-SMOG to report sightings.

Another local tribe I consult is students. Several are interviewed in the video. They, like my own teen-agers, have an icy grip on what’s really happening. Well, maybe not worldwide--such as with global warming--but they sure know who among their friends has asthma attacks and how often. They also know whether they plan to stay around here if the local environment goes to hell.

The video, produced by Barbara Page of the pollution control district and Sandra Holden of Holden Lewin Communications, is titled “The Future Is Up in the Air.” It includes some remarkable things going on around here that can help lick the dirty air problem.

Local industry has gone way beyond just obeying the letter of the law in cleaning up its environmental act. For instance, 3-M in Camarillo did such a good job of cleaning up its chemical emissions--while improving efficiency and profitability--that it could afford to make a donation to the district for clean-air education.

Another scene, my favorite, shows Allen Carrozza of Scholfield Solar, a local firm, installing smogless, sun-powered heating in a local pool. “In the future around here I hope these solar rigs will be as common as TV satellite dishes,” he says in the video.

The video and the new publications are going to be showing up in the fall curriculum of county schools, Lang says. Meanwhile, I suggest that any Earthwatch reader who might be in charge of programming for a club or group get this package by calling 645-1415.