SYLMAR : Harding Street School Opens Hands-On Lab

Hundreds of young students petted corn snakes, rabbits and other creatures Monday as the Harding Street Elementary School’s one-room Science Exploration Center opened its doors.

The school is one of seven Sylmar-based public elementary schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District participating in an experiment to stimulate academic interest by offering parents and students a choice of schools and curriculum.

“Every school had to come up with a plan to get students interested,” said Parrish Higa, a sixth-grade teacher who oversees the center, a hands-on lab. “They gravitate toward anything they can touch and feel and do. That’s what it’s all about in an exploration center: touching and feeling and doing.”

The Sylmar choice plan marks the first time that LAUSD parents can ignore attendance boundaries and choose which school they want their children to attend. Among the 6,250 students at the seven Sylmar campuses, only 185 students will be able to transfer, but so far the transfer rate is slow, with only about three dozen students having switched.

Funded by teacher and private donations, the hands-on center will feature a new theme every six weeks and be open to teach students up to three hours a week. The current focus is life science, packing the small room with 20 mini-labs including microscopes, cages and a terrarium.

Teachers say nothing works better to stimulate interest in other academic areas such as social studies, math and language arts.

“It gets their interest piqued in something we can follow in the classroom,” said Linda MacDuff, a third-grade teacher.

If early response is any indication, one not need be a scientist to find evidence of the science center’s success. They can just look at the smiles of students such as Casey Green.

“It makes learning real fun,” said Green, 11, of Sylmar. “It gets us to do the work.”