Grant Program Lets Students Reach Beyond Schoolbooks

Fifth-grader Max Stowell spends his spare time exploring the numbers game.

The Mound Elementary School student took five months to produce a book of original math grids, games and puzzles. The 10-year-old recently distributed 100 copies of his effort to fourth- and fifth-graders at the South Hill Road campus.

Each year, 10 students from education programs for the gifted throughout the city receive small grants to pursue an educational project in a subject of their choice. Max, who will attend a Johns Hopkins University summer program offering college-level math courses to high-achieving youngsters, chose mathematics.

Max received $75--two-member teams get twice that--to help him produce an 11-page book, “Differs, Zubots and Zings.” The quiz book, geared to students ages 9 to 11, contains three sections--one with logic grids and two with different kinds of math puzzles.

There is also an introduction and a brief biography of the young author, with details about his outside interests--playing with electronics and trading Pokemon cards. When he grows up, Max plans to attend UCLA and wants to be a guard for the Lakers.

After handing out copies of his book, Max explained to fellow fifth-graders the significance of logic grids--a series of boxes that can be filled with written answers using deductive reasoning. The logic grids in Max’s book enable students to match people with their state of residence or their preferred method of transportation by piecing together clues.

As Steven Rowley’s math class unscrambled the words, corresponding numbers and letters helped them solve a second puzzle. The third part of the book includes the “differs, zubots and zings” mentioned in the title. These are oddly shaped puzzle pieces that the reader is to match with other pieces with similar properties.

“The book was fun to make, but the shapes were hard to create,” Max said. “I had to make all different shapes on the computer.”

The faculty and students at Mound Elementary had eagerly anticipated Max’s book, said Susan Morris, a teacher in the school’s gifted and talented education program.

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Now in its 10th year, the student grants are offered by Parents and Advocates of Gifted Education (PAGE), a group that supports such programs in the Ventura Unified School District.

Its grants are available to the district’s nearly 1,600 students who have been identified as gifted--those with an IQ of 120 or higher and who have achieved a high score on another aptitude test. Statewide, about 6% of students are considered gifted.

PAGE’s grant program is unique in Ventura County. Although other school districts receive financial support from parent-teacher groups for special projects, none has a formal grant process.

Other PAGE grant recipients have used the money to promote preservation of endangered local wildlife.

Mound School student Alexandra Morris used the $75 she received as a third-grader to promote donor sponsorship of island foxes on the Channel Islands. Her effort has raised $1,000 toward the park service’s island fox preservation program.

Her project came to the attention of a Santa Barbara Zoo curator who is now using Alexandra’s research to spark greater interest in wildlife preservation among zoo patrons. Eight-year-old Alexandra also received a $200 grant from the National Park Service toward her effort.

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Nina Locelso and Katelyn Lairmore, seventh-graders at Anacapa Middle School, made a video of the Ventura coast for the National Parks Service’s Channel Islands Museum during their sixth-grade year as part of the grant program.

Fifth-graders Emma Klein and Louise Littig joined forces to win a $150 grant to create a seeing-eye dog program at Poinsettia Elementary School and a related video and pamphlet about a guide dog’s life, said Principal Nancy Bradford.

“This is such a great program because it gives students a tremendous opportunity to pursue new educational experiences in the subject area they are interested in,” Bradford said.

Natalie Means, a fifth-grader at Pierpont Elementary School, chose a more artistic pursuit for her independent project and spent part of the fourth grade taking a class that required her to use a potter’s wheel.

Other grant recipients have sought to help other students overcome a language barrier or expand their knowledge of history through travel and discovery.

Fourth-grader Bianca Banderas and fifth-grader Onofre Banderas produced videos--one about water in its different forms, such as when it freezes, and another on vegetation at Anacapa Island and Ventura’s shore--as part of their projects at Will Rogers Elementary School. Each video was narrated in both English and Spanish.

Sixth-grader Frankie Moran’s grant project at Poinsettia Elementary School was to produce a video travelogue of his visits to historic sites, including the 13 original American states.

Additionally, gifted kindergarten through 12th-grade students can apply for grants of up to $500 from both the California Assn. for the Gifted and the National Assn. of Gifted Children.

Gifted students “want to do more with what they are learning in the classroom, so I’m encouraging them all to submit applications for this year’s student mini-grant program,” said Mound teacher Susan Morris. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to be creative and become interested in something that isn’t assigned.”

Morris said exceptional students thrive on extra challenges, but also need adult assistance at an early age to help them complete their extracurricular projects.

“Parents are an important part of this program, because they serve as mentors for their children,” she said. “They and their child put a lot of time into these projects. The student learns the process, how to follow through and how to meet concrete goals. They learn so many skills beyond the classroom that they wouldn’t learn otherwise.”

Robin Stowell, Max’s mother, said her son first envisioned his math book last year and wrote a proposal for the grant. She and her husband contributed an additional $25 for paper for the project, as well as the cost of copies. Now her son wants to secure a publisher so he can market his book.

“I wanted other students to find out more about puzzles and logic and have fun with math,” Max said. “I wanted them to enjoy it and have more fun with it like I do.”