‘Doc’ Has Kept Montclair Prep on Right Track

During his 40 years as Montclair College Preparatory School’s headmaster, Vernon “Doc” Simpsonhas helped turn hippies into Harvard grads and slackers into scientists. And, he says, he wouldn’t trade a moment of it.

“My career has been totally satisfying, a complete joy,” he said.

Doc, as his students and colleagues affectionately call him, opened Montclair’s doors in 1957 with only five students enrolled. Over the ensuing decades, the educator went on to earn a doctorate in educational psychology, while he watched his Van Nuys student body grow to its current 400 pupils.

Simpson, who has served on the city’s Youth Advisory Committee and who has earned numerous city and state awards for his educational contributions, says the greatest challenge facing teachers today is the competition for students’ attention, which is often diverted by the Internet and an abundance of entertainment options.

“This is the Net generation, the digital children,” Simpson said. “They want to be involved in everything. Our job is to keep them focused on a goal.”

With 98% of Montclair’s students heading off to four-year colleges, he believes his staff is on the right track. And he plans to keep them there.

PROGRAM NOTES

Learning Tolerance: It looks and feels like summer camp, but the 125 high school students attending the weeklong National Conference for Community and Justice Brotherhood/Sisterhood Camp won’t be doing much swimming or hiking. The ethnically diverse 16- and 17-year-olds--25 of whom attend schools in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys--are headed Saturday for the wooded mountain retreat near Redlands to attend workshops designed to reduce prejudice and ease racial tensions.

Teachers and psychologists will guide the teens through exercises in which they experience negative racial, gender and sexual stereotypes, then discuss how those stereotypes lead to prejudice.

“I’m hoping to understand other cultures and look at how we’re so different, yet the same,” said Jenniffer Coronado, 17, a Van Nuys High School senior.

“I get to express different political issues in a safe setting,” said Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies senior Dane Klein, 17. “I can hear other people’s opinions and formulate new ones of my own too.”

Spaced Out: Only the heartiest souls venture to Edwards Air Force Base in the summer. But for Nancy McIntyre and the 24 other teachers from around the country who attended the NASA Education Workshop, the trek to Edwards’ Dryden Flight Research Center in the Mojave Desert last month was well worth it.

McIntyre, a Chaminade College Preparatory science teacher, attended classes on aeronautics and human exploration in space. She also visited the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and checked out the Space Shuttle Atlantis modifications that are underway in Palmdale.

The all-expenses-paid week is designed to help teachers incorporate space technology into their math and science lessons.

KUDOS

High Honors: Tania Pendl is heading for UC Berkeley this fall with a Glendale Community College education under her belt and a $500 Faculty Award for Academic Excellence in her pocket. The Burbank resident, 22, who graduated with a 4.0 average, also received the college’s prestigious $6,000 Russell Halsey Turrill Humanities Award.

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