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Amgen honors area teacher
A fifth-grade teacher in Westlake Village has received a national award for science teaching excellence, one of 30 winners in the 16th annual Amgen Science Teaching Awards.
Steve Latshaw will receive $5,000, and his Westlake Hills School will get an additional $5,000 for its science program.
The winners were chosen from cities throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Six teachers in California received the grants this year.
"I'm very surprised," Latshaw said Wednesday. He thought the awards would go to middle and high school instructors who teach only science classes.
Science is just one of numerous subjects taught in Latshaw's fifth-grade classroom. But he tries to use science as a starting point for everything else, he said.
"It's more than reading stuff in a book," he said. "It's about physical things in the world around them."
He gets his students to build things on the computer and with their hands to try their own experiments and watch the scientific process unfold.
Westlake Hills plans to use the $5,000 to purchase computer software and create a science room stocked with equipment that all teachers can share.
Latshaw, who has taught for 37 years, said he thinks he will use his winnings to purchase a laptop. He's also considering a trip to Hawaii with his wife.
Amgen, a Thousand Oaks-based biotechnology drug manufacturer, partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education to judge the competition.
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