2 Teachers Among 6 to Win Award

Barry Shapiro loves a good mystery.

The North Hollywood teacher for years has been challenging his students to solve mysteries as part of the curriculum in his biology class.

Shapiro and Granada Hills teacher Richard Fey were two of only six teachers nationwide given the Chevron Education Award for their creative approaches to teaching ordinary subjects.

“The competition was unbelievable,” Shapiro said. “To think that two Southern California teachers won says a lot [about] our school system.”

Shapiro and Fey, chosen from a field of 250 math, science and technology teachers, were honored at a ceremony last month in Washington, D.C.

The awards, which included a $5,000 cash prize and the posting of their lessons on the World Wide Web (www.chevron.com), were given to teachers with the most creative and effective lesson plans, according to a spokeswoman for Chevron.

Shapiro won for a lesson on DNA in his North Hollywood High Zoo Magnet 10th-grade biology class. The idea behind the lesson is that a thief breaks into the students’ lab and steals parts of DNA codes they were experimenting on. Students must then decipher the DNA code and make a model of the mammal it represents. The goal is to find out if the animal is affected by the theft.

“Some animals will have serious defects as a result of the theft,” said Shapiro, 56.

Fey, a math and science teacher at Porter Middle School, was recognized for his lesson in which students used CD-ROMs and the Internet to create sugar and food-chain models. The students then made fast-food restaurant-style menus depicting the food chain. As part of the lesson, other students representing different levels of the food chain, from herbivores to carnivores, would “purchase” menu items based on their position in the food chain.

“These are some of the most motivating projects we’ve seen in academia,” said Samuel Taylor, chairman and curator of education at the California Academy of Sciences. “Children want to learn when the lessons are exciting and have a direct correlation to their day-to-day lives.”

It was the first year for a contest that Chevron hopes to make an annual event. “If our industry is to continue making historic advances into the next millennium, it’s imperative to involve young people now and get them excited about the subjects that form the building blocks of our future,” said Dave O’Reilly, president of Chevron Products Co.