First of a series
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Dr. Levin greets Bonnie Wacker yesterday in the garden behind the Jackson Market. Photo, Kara Frans.
Standing amidst a just-revealed Culver City secret – the public debut of the splendid garden behind Tony Istwani’s Jackson Market – the only rocket scientist in a race of smart people for the School Board, said Sunday afternoon his campaign is airborne because voters realize “I am not a professional politician, just someone who wants to get involved and help.”
Modesty serves him well. While that statement is mostly true – he is not just now getting involved – Dr. Steve Levin ain’t of pedestrian level, either. Hardly a used shoe salesman, his 26-year record at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory will attest to that.
Two months after he was formally introduced to the community as Candidate Levin, he still comes off as fundamentally shy. This may explain why it has taken his sister, former Mayor Sandi Levin, 10 years to coax him into competing for the Board in the Nov. 5 election.
It finally is becoming known that during the past decade, as the oldest of his three children entered the school system, Dr. Levin may have spent as much time as some teachers in classrooms.
One of his FAQs is whether residents are intimidated when a rocket scientist knocks on their doors. “I hope not,” he said. “People often want to talk about science, which is great. I love that.”
Seamlessly, Dr. Levin segued to a favorite topic.
Distinctions Among Students
“I find that school kids often want to talk about science,” he said. “I do a lot of volunteering in the schools, and when I do that, I don’t have to do much to get the kids interested.
“When I show up in a classroom and I say, ‘I have worked on the light left over from the Big Bang, and searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, and studying places where stars are being formed, and we have a spacecraft that is going to Jupiter,’ the kids will ask questions for the next three hours if you let them.”
There is quite a difference between and among the responses of students as they graduate in age.
“For the very young kids,” Dr. Levin said, “kindergarten, first grade, second grade, they are still learning the difference between a question and a story. They want to talk about what is going on in their lives. They are interested in figuring stuff out. But they really want to touch things.
“Whenever I can, I talk to them about what they want to talk about. I let them ask questions. I am not afraid to say ‘I don’t know,’ if they ask a question where I don’t know the answer. It is great to see their eyes grow wide when you tell them, ‘Nobody knows the answer.’
“This is not something we get enough of in our schools,” Dr. Levin said.
“Third, fourth and fifth graders, those are kids with a ton of questions. They want to think about the answers and they are very involved.
“When you get up to middle school and high school, I have found that students are a little too used to waiting for somebody to give them the answer, in my opinion. They sit there, awaiting both the question and the answer.”
(To be continued)
