800 Elementary Pupils Get High School Tour

While the regular students from Cleveland High School had a day off from school Thursday, their seats were taken over by a group of smaller and younger pupils who learned that high school is a pretty cool place.

For several hours, the halls of the Reseda school were congested with more than 800 fourth- and fifth-grade students from neighboring schools, who toured the school as part of Cleveland High’s annual celebration of its adopt-a-school program.

The four-hour event was designed to introduce elementary school students to high schools and encourage them to stay in school and aspire to attend college.

The younger students “get to have a high school experience and it’s fun for them,” said Cleveland Principal Eileen Banta. “For many it’s their first time even being in a high school.”

Students were divided into groups of 30, which visited math, science, music and shop classes where teachers either guided them through experiments or explained subjects as they would to high school students.

In one science class, 9-year-old Riana Ward of Cantara Street Elementary School learned how to detect the difference between things that are acid-based and things that are not.

“We got to mix chemicals with cabbage juice and we decided if it was pink it was an acid and if it wasn’t it was a base and that was really neat because I’m really into science,” Riana said.

The fourth-grader said she was looking forward to becoming a cheerleader at Cleveland after surveying the myriad after-school activities. But, she said, she was most impressed with the size of the school.

“My school is much smaller than this school,” she said. “This is like really gigantic. But that’ll be OK when I’m here for real.”