EDUCATION Students work the fields to learn...

EDUCATION

Students work the fields

to learn Chavez’s history

On Wednesday, Cesar Chavez Day, about 80 Andersen Elementary

School fourth-graders visited a seven-acre farm in Irvine, where

volunteers pick fruits and vegetables to feed local families.

The food the students collected Wednesday will go to feed about

4,000 people through the Second Harvest Food Bank, which runs the

program. Working in a field, if only for a couple hours, helps the

students get a better understanding of the lives of the migrant farm

workers Chavez fought to protect, said teacher Jeff Qualey.

* Nine UC Irvine students spent Tuesday night in the county jail

after campus police arrested them for blocking work crews from a

trailer park earmarked for destruction this summer. Students, some of

them park residents, gathered outside the Irvine Meadows West park on

Tuesday to try and prevent soil sampling, scheduled that morning on

the 80-space property, which is home to 100 students. The university

announced in 1999 that it would close the park on July 31 to build a

new parking lot, and eventually a new building.

* Aspiring jazz musicians from 10 local intermediate and high

schools showed their stuff to a panel of judges Thursday at Vanguard

University’s second annual High School Jazz Band Festival.

-- Marisa O’Neil