Technological Leap Takes School Away From Tradition

Changing to keep up with high-tech times, De Anza Middle School no longer pumps out kids who grow up to be grease monkeys exclusively.

Today, the school--steeped in an oil-town tradition of vocational education--graduates eighth-graders who are proficient in the latest office software and can launch miniature rockets designed from blueprints created on computers.

The reason for the switch--from traditional wood shop and metalworking classes to “tech-prep” computer courses--is as simple as the nationwide shift in the economy, said Ted Malos, director of information services and technology for the Ventura Unified School District.

“The Avenue was a special place,” Malos said. “It was an oil town, with ranching and cowboys. The school tried to reflect that community. The school wanted its kids to know how to weld.”

But now, there are simply better jobs out there for skilled computer technicians than there are for blue-collar workers, he said. Driving down Ventura Avenue, Malos pointed to the nearby headquarters of Patagonia and Kinko’s, which have sprouted up in recent years to replace old oil companies like Vetco.

In 1991, De Anza took a big step toward changing its industrial image, developed since the school opened in 1958, by investing $150,000 to create a technological laboratory.

In this spacious “exploratory” center--where sleek islands equipped with computers and videotape players abound--children learn rocket and space technology, research and design, graphic communications, creative media, meteorology, robotics and applied physics.

And the school continues to forge ahead with its modern visions.

Last spring, De Anza got a grant from KNBC-TV to set up a weather satellite on its roof and broadcast its temperatures live from the station’s World Wide Web site. About the same time, the school bought 40 computers, which are all hooked to the Internet.

“We wanted to totally change the image of industrial arts,” Principal Dave Myers said. “We wanted people to say, ‘Hey, this is maybe a school where smart people go.’ ”

Today, practically every class includes a computer component.

Witness a recent English lesson, where instead of writing questions on the blackboard in chalk, the teacher used a computer monitor and mouse to display essay questions on a big screen.

“And we thought overheads were a big deal,” Myers said with a laugh.

Or visit the typing class, where instead of using typewriters, students learn to punch the keyboard by using a software program that features images of hands striking the correct letters.

Of all the schools in Ventura, why choose De Anza, probably the poorest middle school in the district?

“I had to pick somebody first,” Malos said, adding that the forward-thinking leadership at De Anza has made the modernization efforts at the school quite simple.

And now that De Anza has the technology, other schools want it, too, Malos said.

He met recently with leaders at Anacapa Middle School to install 35 computers, and at Balboa Middle School for a similar installation, he said. For now, Cabrillo Middle School is content with maintaining a lab of 50 computers, he said.

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Everybody has ambitious technology aims now,” Malos said. “But somebody had to go out on a limb and do it first.”

Actually, Myers and his De Anza staff didn’t consider bringing computers on board much of a risk.

Myers said going high-tech was a “necessity” for his school’s students, 75% of whom are considered to be at the poverty level.

He explained that the school gets to cash in on the fact that its 750 students--half Latino, half white--scored below the state average in reading and math scores.

Because of that inequity, Myers said, De Anza qualifies for special state funding.

The special category has enabled De Anza to accumulate an additional $60,000 each year, which officials decided to put toward computer technology, Myers said.

Despite the benefits of microchips and software, some parents wax nostalgic for the days of wood shop and welding.

Mechanic Brent Clements, a 32-year-old graduate of De Anza, said it’s sad that his 11-year-old daughter, Jessica, is making what he called “arts and crafts” projects, instead of the coffee tables he used to make at school.

“We made stuff you could use,” he said. “Now they make birdhouses and napkin holders.”

But Clements, the owner of The Tune-Up Man on East Thompson Boulevard, also sees the benefits of his daughter’s education.

“The computer stuff is great,” he said. And his daughter is “further along than I was in math and computers.”

He added that he wished he had learned about computers at an earlier age.

“How did I know that as a mechanic I’d be using a keyboard all day long? . . . All that stuff, scoping out car engines, that’s all done on computers.”

Jim Hughes--, a longtime wood-shop teacher who led De Anza in making the technological leap, also misses the past, but ultimately is pleased with the results of the new curriculum.

“We needed to get the kids ready for the jobs of the Information Age,” he said.

“The education we now give is more integrated, where math, science and the language arts come together. . . . This is where the jobs are--in technology.”