Group to Tell Life Stories of Noted Women

How would it feel to be Olympic sports great Wilma Rudolph or Titanic survivor Molly Brown? A group of Santa Clarita Valley women will find out this week when they adopt the personas of these famous women, as well as those of Helen of Troy, English explorer Mary Kingsley, artist Grandma Moses and environmentalist Rachel Carson.

In celebration of Women’s History Month, the group of PTA volunteers will present the life stories and accomplishments of the historical figures to students at 28 elementary and middle schools. The event is sponsored by the American Assn. of University Women and the participating women.

EVENTS

Music to His Ears: El Camino Real High School ninth-grader Albert Chiou--one of three finalists in the Music Teachers Assn. of California-sponsored Piano Concerto Competition--will perform the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor on Sunday at Glendale Community College.

The 15-year-old auditioned before a panel of judges at the Pasadena Public Library in January. Chiou and two other finalists won the opportunity to perform one movement each of the challenging concerto with the Glendale Community Orchestra.

Tickets, available at the door for the 4 p.m. concert, are $5 for general admission and $3 for students and seniors.

Rocket Scientists: Fourth- and fifth-grade students at El Oro Way Elementary School in Granada Hills are in the final countdown for their Blastoff event scheduled for Friday. The budding astrophysicists, who have been studying aerodynamics, astronomy and Newton’s laws, have hand-crafted 23 rockets, which they will send skyward at morning and afternoon launches. The event is the culmination of a school-wide study of mechanics and rocketry.

The space study was inspired by fifth-grade teacher Cathie Kenney, who attended Boeing’s Space Camp in Florida for a week last summer.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Kenney said. “The camp allowed me to bring this project to the kids, who just love it. They are really interested in this material and have a real grasp of it too.”

PROGRAM NOTES

Spaced Out: Forty science students from Lawrence Middle School in Chatsworth recently attended Rocketdyne’s “International Space Station: Countdown to Launch” program, which gave the students an inside look at the space station, a section of which will be launched this summer. The students met with Boeing engineers for a tour of the Canoga Park facility, where station parts are being manufactured and tested.

Students also met NASA astronaut and pilot Mary Ellen Weber, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Usachev, Johnson Space Center scientists and others. These experts answered questions about space-suit technology, space botany and robotic tools.

Black History: Eleventh-graders at Encino’s Westmark School took a literary trip to the Harlem Renaissance and beyond. The students analyzed the works of African American writers such as Langston Hughes and James Baldwin, and are now assembling a class book with their interpretations of the poetry and short stories of the period.

Class Notes appears every Wednesday. Send news about schools to the Valley Edition, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, 91311. Or fax it to (818) 772-3338. Or e-mail them to diane.wedner@latimes.com