04/02/2009 Institute provides hands-on learning

Science-themed program allows students to 'see it, feel it and do it'

By Joe Tash

2:00 a.m. April 2, 2009

Five years before Neil Armstrong's historic walk on the moon, an elementary school teacher in southeastern San Diego launched an after-school science club in his classroom. The only equipment he had was a worn, 40-gallon aquarium that he filled with fish, sea cucumbers and octopuses.

Forty-five years after the program's launch and nearly a decade after the death of visionary founder Tom Watts, the Elementary Institute of Science - as it is now known - is thriving, attracting hundreds of children from throughout the county to its after-school, weekend and summer classes.

Students flock to the program and parents rave about it because the Elementary Institute of Science offers a unique, hands-on approach to learning that usually isn't available in public schools, said Doris Anderson, the institute's longtime executive director, herself a former junior high teacher.

"That's our trademark. It is hands-on. It is not textbook-based. They can see it, feel it and do it," Anderson said.

The program has grown from its humble beginnings in Watts' classroom. After moving to a once-condemned house, EIS five years ago settled in a $7 million, 15,000-square-foot building at 51st and Market streets in the San Diego neighborhood of Emerald Hills. The institute has an annual budget of $731,000, funded mostly by foundation and corporate grants, said Ruth Frazier, director of development.

The curriculum of the institute has expanded along with the number of students it serves. About 700 children annually learn about such topics as engineering, biology, chemistry, ecology and astronomy, along with computers and photography.

But science remains the focus.

"It hasn't changed," Anderson said. "The core program is almost the same as I inherited 21 years ago."

The institute's classrooms don't have desks or chairs arranged in neat rows. Instead, students sit on stools arranged around counters, much like real scientific laboratories. In photography class, they learn to develop photos in a darkroom, and in other classes, they conduct experiments guided by their instructors, local college students majoring in the subjects they teach.

Kian Liss, a fifth-grader at Green Elementary School in San Diego whose mother is a special education assistant in the Lemon Grove School District, has been going to the Elementary Institute of Science for about three years. "We can't say enough good things about it," said his father, John Liss.

"Kian's exposure to the college kids is important," John Liss said. "They offer him excellent role models, a positive influence."

While most of the students in the after-school classes live in the vicinity of the institute, on Saturdays and during the summer, students come from as far away as Alpine and Oceanside. The core program is for children ages 7 to 13, while a relatively new, but smaller program called the Commission on Science That Matters, targets older students.

During the school year, students attend from 4 to 6 p.m. on either Tuesdays and Thursdays, or Mondays and Wednesdays; or a four-hour session on Saturdays. The summer sessions run for nine weeks and students can sign up for one to three weeks.

Fees are $20 per month for fall and spring, and $55 a week for summer.

On a recent afternoon, students were engrossed in their scientific studies, even though they had just spent a full day in school.

In one classroom, students learned about Bernoulli's Principle, which explains a differential in pressure that allows aircraft to fly. The students balanced pingpong balls on streams of air generated by electric hair dryers.

In another room, students assembled human skeletons with a computer program.

Luci Dokken, 12, said she finds the classes fun and interesting. Her favorite courses are photography and computer science, where students are learning to use the Flash animation program.

"I want to be an animator when I grow up so it's a good place to start out," Luci said.

If she wasn't attending the program, she said she would probably be at home watching TV or playing video games.

"I think this is way better than playing video games," Luci said. "We get to do activities and projects. It's more hands-on, which is cool."

Chelsea Foster, 16, a student at High Tech High, attended the institute as a young child, and she now participates in the teen program, which has studied such issues as health, energy and water.

Chelsea said that when she was in elementary school, she learned things in EIS that other students didn't study until middle school.

"I felt whenever I came to EIS, there was always something new to do, something new to learn, something exciting that would challenge me," she said.

Anderson said the siblings of former students often enroll in the program, and she's even seen parents who attended the program as children send their own offspring. One of the most rewarding experiences, she said, was when two former students came back as instructors during their university studies.

"To me that was a really big 'Aha' moment to have that happen," Anderson said.

Joe Tash is a freelance writer

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