Classroom

For the Love of Physics From the End of the Rainbow to the Edge of Time — A Journey Through the Wonders of Physics Walter Lewin, with Warren Goldstein Free Press, 302 pp., $26 For more than 30 years, the pioneering X-ray astrophysicist Walter Lewin taught core curriculum physics courses to undergraduates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For this alone, he probably ought to be put on the fast track for canonization. To most career physicists in exalted places like MIT and Caltech, undergraduates are things you bump into in the hall.

Kareen Sandoval was among the first to spot her tree, a skinny little thing about 9 feet tall with dark shimmering leaves. "Look how beautiful you are," she said, reaching for the trunk. "I want you to grow big and strong and never get knocked down. " Along 8th Street in Westlake on Saturday, volunteers planted 62 trees, but this was about more than mere beautification. Every tree honored a mother from the neighborhood, each one a woman whose volunteer work has made a difference in Westlake and Pico-Union, just west of downtown Los Angeles.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

UC, then and now Re "Bring back the idea of free UC," Column, April 11 My husband and I started at UCLA in 1966; our fees were about $80 per quarter. I applied only to UCLA, where I was virtually assured a spot because of my 3.0 grade point average. I had the best education money could buy. Every time fees increased, I feared that tuition would be next and that one of the best university systems in the country would be placed out of reach of most California students.

Re "Seniority, not quality, counts," Column, March 25 In his call for merit to prevail over seniority, Steve Lopez fails to let the readers know how it will be measured. Will it be determined by a principal who visits a classroom one time during the school year? Will it be by parents who like a particular teacher? Will it be by test scores? If so, will chronic truants be counted? Will teachers get to choose their students -- just as every business, private or charter school and government agency get to do?

Re "L.A. District Weighs Furloughs to Save Jobs," May 24: Rather than propose to place the burden of budget shortfalls upon those who work and care directly for our children, here are a few suggestions to help the LAUSD save money: (1) Return all literacy and math coaches to the classroom, where they can work directly with students. (2) Reduce all after-school staff development meetings. The vast majority of these meetings mainly "develop" the staff's ability to sit and turn their brains off instead of providing any useful ideas that can be used in the classroom.

One of my classes was featured in one of Bill Billiter's "A Day in the Classroom" series ("Professor Maps Out a Winning Approach") Oct. 21. I am very happy that his visit turned out so well in print. As with the recent suicide we had here at Cal State Fullerton, most of the larger articles we read about us seem to deal with "bad news." Although I realize that there was no assurance that Billiter would write up something about my class as "good news," I nevertheless appreciate very much that it turned out that way. Many of us here at the university are concerned about the many unusual and sensational problems we seem to encounter on campus.

Re "History ... With No Facts," editorial, Feb. 22: I am an art teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. My students and I are beginning a thematic unit about war. We argue passionately about impending war with Iraq, make art, learn some history and have fun. We have looked at the history of the establishment of the Middle Eastern states at the end of World War I and debated whether the U.S. government's justification for war stands up...

Re "Tailor Teaching to the Child," Editorial, May 26: Your editorial caught an often-omitted detail in terms of children's learning deficits--the teachers who refer children for batteries of tests. The insinuation is that classroom teachers are not qualified to make these decisions. I hope Mel Levine's program will sharpen teachers' abilities to discern and analyze these learning deficits. Perhaps Levine's training will lend credibility to the classroom teacher. The next step would be to increase the number of school psychologists.

A man at an adult education center who allegedly shot and killed another student in a classroom Wednesday morning told his family the shooting was an accident, his mother said Thursday. Binh Thanh Ma, 18, told his family in a brief telephone conversation from the Orange County Jail on Wednesday night that he had been showing the gun to Jose Flores Tirado, 19, of Santa Ana during an English language class when he fired a bullet into Tirado's chest, according to his mother, Lan Ma.

Any day now, I expect to see a crowd of substitute teachers marching around Los Angeles Unified School District headquarters, wearing signs that say "I AM PATRENA SHANKLING" and waving lists of dumb things that substitutes have been asked to do. Shankling is the substitute teacher fired by Supt. John Deasy last fall, after he scolded her for giving 12th-grade students what he considered busywork: copying class procedures from a sheet of paper into their composition books. Since a Times profile on Deasy and my column this week on the incident, teachers have rallied to Shankling's defense, describing in emails, letters and online comments the hard life of a substitute.

It's difficult doing what "Monsieur Lazhar"does, conveying the delicate reality of human emotions in a way that engages without being overdone, but this French-language Canadian film makes it look like child's play. The story of how an Algerian substitute teacher in French-speaking Montreal and his middle-school class help each other confront the presence of death in life, this film deals almost casually with a range of issues and themes, handling with a light and even affectionate touch weighty subjects like grief, guilt, community and love.

USC tailback Curtis McNeal has enjoyed a quiet spring. No injuries. No uncertainty about grades. Just work on the field, which is just fine with the fifth-year senior. Maneuverings to address depth issues at tailback have provided plenty of drama, but the Trojans' top returning rusher has not been distracted — or sidelined. "I got through it healthy," McNeal said after practice Tuesday, "and I'm looking to continue that. " The Trojans have only two workouts remaining, a practice Thursday and the spring finale at the Coliseum on Saturday.

Should teachers have the freedom to lead private lives we may not all agree with? And should they be able to post controversial tidbits on social networking sites? Jonathan Turley, a professor of public interest law at George Washington University, believes that they should. He took his argument to our Opinion pages Monday in “ Teachers under the morality microscope ,” writing that teachers shouldn't be disciplined or fired for activities they pursue outside of work so long as those activities are lawful.

A former student at a small Christian college opened fire in the middle of a classroom, police said, leaving seven people dead in one of California's worst mass killings. Authorities and witnesses described the suspect, identified as 43-year-old One L. Goh, as calmly spraying bullets around the classroom of Oikos University on Monday morning, seemingly without discrimination. "He stood up and began shooting," Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said Monday evening. Goh allegedly then left the classroom and continued his attack.

Amayrany Reyes ignored the yogurt but gobbled up her strawberries and nibbled her blueberry muffin. Then the bright-eyed third-grader, sporting a pink bow in her long braid, delivered the verdict on breakfast in her Los Angeles classroom. "Everything is good," she said, adding that the food makes her feel more energetic. More than 200,000 students in 267 schools will enjoy such breakfast benefits in the next year under a major initiative announced Thursday by the Los Angeles Unified School District and the L.A. Fund for Public Education, a fundraising group.

An Irvine teacher with AIDS who wants to return to the classroom must remain in his office job, at least temporarily, under a ruling issued Tuesday by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. A three-judge panel denied Vincent Chalk's request to return immediately to the classroom but granted his motion for an expedited appeal and agreed to hear oral arguments in the case during the week of Nov. 2. Chalk took his case to the appeals court after U.S. District Judge William P.

A metal, 8-foot-tall, simulated rocket with "USA" and "NASA" painted on its side waits in the corner of a Linda Vista Elementary School classroom, tantalizing students' imaginations. The students will get to spend an entire day reading and gazing at glow-in-the-dark stars in the spacecraft, and aren't intimidated by the responsibility of planning their own schedule.

Marty Biegel, who took over as Fairfax High School's head basketball coach in 1969 at a time of racial tension in Los Angeles and united players and students both in the classroom and on the court, died Tuesday. He was 90. Biegel, who taught history in Los Angeles schools for more than 30 years, died at an assisted-living facility in Los Angeles. His death was confirmed by the Los Angeles County coroner's office. When the pint-size Biegel became the varsity basketball coach, Fairfax High was a mostly white, Jewish school near Hollywood that was strong in academics, not sports.

I knew Andrew Breitbart, who died at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center about midnight Thursday. We lived in the same neighborhood. Our kids attend the same public school. For several years, they were in the same classroom. Andrew and I would gravitate toward one another at school events and inevitably get into heated discussions about politics. We were told by the teacher once to leave the classroom during an open house to show off our kids' work. I can't think of a single thing Andrew and I agreed on. But I will say this: The man was a true believer, and he had the courage of his convictions.