Publication Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Warehouse of secrets
Warehouse of secrets
(March 17, 2004) Strange treasures await in Paly's instructional materials center
by Rachel Metz
"Can you imagine pulling this out?" school district librarian Susan Scott asked, snagging an old wooden washboard from a low shelf.
"Like, 'Hey, we're going to wash!'" she joked.
Scott stood in a school district portable next to Palo Alto High School, but with the washboard in hand and ancient lanterns and a water pump sitting nearby she might as well have been standing in the middle of 19th-century America.
The portable houses the district's instructional materials center, a haven of multicultural and historical artifacts available for checkout by district teachers.
"You can tell a kid (about a subject) but when they can see it and touch it it's much more impressive," she said.
Situated next to Paly's football field, the warehouse includes items from two large to rope-strung wooden snow shoes to a Mexican bark painting to Australian aboriginal pottery. The center has more than 434 items that can be examined, most of them donations. Some items might come in from departing Stanford graduate students, others from local senior citizens that are getting rid of their possessions or retiring teachers.
"You never know what we have," center clerk Linda Atwood said.
Atwood would know - she's been at the center for five years and seen items trickle in. And with rows of artifacts ranging from a Cook Island tiki statue to a wooden manure pail and spreading dipper, it's clear there's a place for the old, new, dead and strange at the center.
Teachers across the district can access the center's materials, which include the mundane - large laminating machines, art prints and maps -- up front. But toward the shelves in the back are rows of the more obscure -- fossils, Lucite-encased creatures and objects from around the world.
"These guys are very popular," Scott said, tapping the site of a plastic case containing a taxidermy squirrel scrambling down a branch.
Checkout items are most popular with elementary school teachers, but other teachers use them as well. A Spectra art teacher might check out some artifacts for a cultural unit, or a music teacher might want a non-traditional instrument like a wooden flute to teach a lesson.
"There really is a wide appeal. Your teaching really is enhanced when you use these things," Scott said.
Although many items available for checkout are old, the center is careful about having items in its collection that are no longer scientifically accurate. They also replace some items that deteriorate over time - insect displays, for example, since wings and legs fall off, Scott said.
"We use tons of stuff from here," Shauna Rockson said.
Rockson checks out taxidermied animals for her Arctic social studies unit, like a mole, a vole and a house mouse.
"That provokes so much comment from the kids. The No. 1 question is, 'Did you kill them?'" she said.
Also, Rockson noted, the center's objects give students a chance to see animals up close - an ermine, for example - they'd never encounter in California.
"This is a cool place," she said.
Rachel Metz can be e-mailed at rmetz@paweekly.com
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