Class Incentive Sends Students Into Orbit

To capture students’ interest in class, a San Fernando Middle School teacher spent his summer working on an incentive.

Dave Nagel, with help from his teaching partner, Army National Guard Maj. Greg Miller, built a scaled-down replica of the NASA space shuttle in the back of the old wood-shop classroom.

Adorned with a rear-view mirror that says, “Meteorites in mirror are closer than they appear,” and topped with a spaced-out astronaut balloon figure, the shuttle replica isn’t your typical space-bound vehicle.

Inside the cockpit are lighted buttons, switches and two video screens where student pilots play with a Sony Playstation flight simulator while their classmates take tests.

Nagel said he uses the model as a reward for students. If they attend class every day, get good grades and follow class rules, they get to play flight simulator games inside the replica for an hour while classmates take a test.

“One problem we have is student attendance,” Nagel said Tuesday. “If they’re not here, we can’t teach them. So whatever works is fair.”

Although only the top two students of the week are allowed to play the games, every student ultimately climbs up to the cockpit at least once.

The Exploring Technology class was established by Nagel six years ago with a $600 grant from former Principal Maria Reza. With $3 million in federal grants, the course was later expanded to 20 campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Students spend a week working on one of 16 modules, learning the basics of digital imaging, desktop publishing and electronics, among other topics.

Students making plastic figures in the Polymer Technology Module said they like the hands-on aspects of the class and showing off what they’ve made.

Those aspects, along with the video games, Nagel said, are what keep students interested in class.