Learning the Wild

LEARNING THE

Now, class, it's time for a quiz. First question: what is metamorphosis? You don't know? All right; ask Tucson fourth-graders as they putter about in Sabino Creek."That's when caterpillars change into butterflies," they say.

Next question: should that dead snag be cut down to make the woods look better? It doesn't make any difference to you? It does to a second-grader visiting Prescott's Community Nature Center."Don't!" he shrieks. "A woodpecker lives there! That's his home!"

Third question: where does the soapy water go when it leaves your bathtub? You don't know? Ask a Prescott sixth-grader.

"To the sewage treatment plant!" she exclaims.

Adults may know a serviceable definition for environmental education, which is "learning in, for, and about the environment," but Arizona's schoolchildren could teach them a lot more.

Youngsters in Mesa schools know that kangaroo rats never drink water. Deer Valley High School science students know that a red-tailed hawk eats a pound of meat per day. A Tucson four-year-old knows that a nocturnal animal is one that comes out to hunt for food at night. Alongside the basic skills of "readin', 'ritin', and 'rithmetic," the unique plants, animals, and landscapes of the state have become the fourth "r"-resources. Kids learn about the natural wonders of the state both outdoors and in the classroom.

Classroom activities feature, among other things, live animals native to Arizona. When resource specialist Joanne Wolf brings a bull snake, desert tortoise, tarantula, and kangaroo rat to Edison Elementary School from Mesa Public Schools' Science Resource Center, the children of each class have a chance to touch the snake (a nonpoisonous species) and learn about its behavior.

WILD TEXT and PHOTOGRAPHS by JAN and RON BARSTAD

"It's smooth and dry! We thought snakes were slimy!" exclaim two fifth-grade girls, touching with tentative fingers.

Science teachers Chuck Bell and Flint Swerdfeger at Deer Valley High School in Phoenix have made environmental science an integral part of their courses, introducing students to Arizona's vegetation zones, raptor ecology, and predator prey relationships by using live and stuffed animals, animal skulls, and pressed plant specimens.

The most popular part of Deer Valley environmental science lies outside their classrooms in the Wildlife Biology Outdoor Classroom.

The outdoor classroom was an unused acre of DVHS property until Bell and Swerdfeger, with the help of their students, built a desert environment planted with trees, shrubs, grasses, and cacti of the Sonoran Desert.

"The kids had to research the plants," they explain, "to make sure they were correct for the habitat."

At the west end of the plot, they dug a pond. Surrounded by cottonwoods and cattails, the pond is home to the desert pupfish, an endangered species about two inches long. Students survey the pond's population regularly.

The outdoor classroom idea originated in Flagstaff, where a junior high school teacher involved a whole community in the creation of what is now fondly called "The Pond Project." Jim David oversaw the transformation of a marshy, debrisstrewn stretch of the Rio de Flag into an 18-acre natural area with a three-acre pond. Contributions came from the school district, Flagstaff banks and businesses, utilities, agencies of several levels of government, conservation groups, and garden clubs. Math and industrial arts students built a dock, and a home economics class designed barbecue cookers. With its center island and cattail fringe, the pond is a haven for ducks-and sometimes for students from nearby Flagstaff Junior High School.

"When kids have a problem in class," says Jim David, "they can come down here and walk around the pond."

When David won Allis-Chalmers' Conservation Teacher of the Year award in 1979, he was deluged with requests for information on how to build outdoor classrooms. Several have since come into being, at Flowing Wells Junior High in Tucson, Christensen School in Flagstaff, and Palo Christi School in Kingman.

The Palo Christi outdoor classroom includes trails that interpret nature, geology, and Indian life. The Indian Trail features a cave dwelling, a Navajo hogan, a nearly full-sized replica of Montezuma Castle, petroglyphs carved with deer antlers, a garden of native plants used by the Native Americans, corn grinding using metates and manos, and arrowhead making. The Saguaro Trail for the handicapped was completed last summer. The project and its originator, Sharon Hackley, have received the "Search for Excellence in Environmental Education" award from the National Science Teachers Association.

In Flagstaff, The Pond Project led to the founding in 1978 of the Resource Center for Environmental Education. Its parent organization was the Coconino Natural Resource Conservation District. It serves six Coconino County school districts with in-class presentations, in-service training for teachers, and development of outdoor classrooms.

Director Sue Lowry says that the coming together of people from the diverse backgrounds of school, industry, conservation, and government wasn't easy. "We didn't stop yelling at each other for six months," she recalls. Now the team works effectively and has developed the 400-acre Mount Elden Environmental Study Area, complete with its guide-yourself trails, geological features, riparian areas, and historical and prehistorical sites.

Arizona's youngsters go far beyond the classroom to learn about their state. Sixthgraders from Mesa schools spend three days at a camp near the Mogollon Rim at Christopher Creek. Flagstaff schools use Camp Colton for the same purpose, and Tucson schools have Camp Cooper in the Tucson Mountains.

Jodi Simmons, Camp Cooper's director, points to volunteer help as the main ingredient of the camp's success. Volunteers built an adobe replica of an Indian pit house; parents built barbecue facilities, and members of the Arizona Archaeologi-cal and Historical Society guide children through a simulated archeological dig.

"Archaeology is More than a Dig" takes place on a flat piece of ground which is divided into a grid pattern with strings tied to stakes. In the one-meter segments are buried genuine prehistoric artifacts, and Sharon Urban, public archeologist for the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, teaches the proper techniques for digging, screening, and mapping the artifacts.

Schools in central Arizona lost an outdoor education center when the facility at Lake Pleasant Regional Park was closed for the construction of a higher Waddell Dam. The U. S. Bureau of Reclamation will build a larger center on the east side of the lake, but until it's completed-about 1989schools must find other camp space.

Dennis Riley of Orangedale Elementary School misses Lake Pleasant, because Orangedale's emphasis has always been on Sonoran Desert study, whereas the country around its present camp at Chauncey Ranch, near Mayer, is chaparral. But Dick Buscher, principal of Indian Bend Elementary, welcomes the change. His kids are now using Buffalo Ranch near Prescott, and some of his fourth-graders made a trip into Havasupai Canyon last spring.

Says Buscher, "Many of our students have moved here from other parts of the country. They should see as much of Arizona as we can show them."

A new park soon to open-Oracle State Park, near Tucson - is being designed not for conventional recreation but specifically for environmental education. Tanna Baldwin of the Arizona State Parks Board says that its manager is an environmental education specialist.

"Showing Arizona" is part of teachers' commitment to education: they must also teach those first three "r's." Environmental education provides powerful tools to do that: the Arizona Teachers Resource Guide for Environmental Education, Project Learning Tree, and Project WILD.

Sun and water, soil and geology, plants and animals, and humans in the environment are among the subjects covered by the Guide. The Arizona Department of Education makes the Guide available through workshops taught by science education specialist Mike Lange and other members of the department.

Project Learning Tree was conceived in the mid-1970s by the Western Regional Environmental Education Council (WREEC) and the nonprofit American Forest Institute. Using trees as its base, Project Learning Tree takes an interdisciplinary approach to environmental awareness, interdependence of natural resources, and cultural and societal issues.

Its descendant in the 1980s is Project WILD, created by WREEC and the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies on the premise that "young people and their teachers have a vital interest in learning about the earth as a home for people and wildlife." WILD is used in science, social studies, language arts, math, art, physical education, and music classrooms, at kindergarten through 12th grade levels, in at least 37 states. It has been endorsed by the Arizona Alliance for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, a group of education, industry, and government leaders.

Project WILD and Project Learning Tree teacher workshops are coordinated by Kerry Baldwin, education director for Arizona's Game and Fish Department, and Chris Williams, public affairs officer for the U. S. Soil Conservation Service.

Organizing and communicating these diverse environmental activities is the Arizona Association for Learning in and about the Environment (AALE). Its annual conference, Natural History Weekends for teachers, Adopt-a-School Program, and its own Resource Guide are rapidly becoming essential to educators.

If all this activity is going on: if Tucson Audubon Society, Sabino Canyon Volunteer Naturalists, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Institute for Earth Education, Arizona Mining Association, 4-H clubs, and government agencies are adding their efforts; if Prescott College environmental education students are learning to teach by teaching Prescott sixth-graders, and Deer Valley High School science students are doing the same for Phoenix gradeschool children; and if even the Wickenburg Inn resort has a resident naturalist and a community outreach program...Then, class, recognizing all this, the last question on your quiz is this: what is being accomplished by environmental education in Arizona?

Joe Lynch at Christensen School in Flagstaff has seen a decrease in vandalism since the students built the school's Study Area. Lynch's sixth-graders have become real problem-solvers, too.

"We've rebuilt our greenhouse three times,” says Lynch. “The kids figured why it didn't work right and corrected it.”

Howard Gillmore, assistant director of Maricopa County Parks and Recreation, thinks people have become too “concretized” and that environmental education is helping them regain a sense of their place in the ecosystem.

Carl Tomoff, director of Prescott's Community Nature Center, says snag ecology makes children aware of animals' needs as well as those of humans. “Everybody needs a home,” he points out, “and a woodpecker living in a tree is an example a first-grader can understand.” Every sixth-grader who has visited the Prescott sewage treatment plant with Doug Hulmes's environmental education class from Prescott College knows why it must be enlarged. Flagstaff residents send postcards picturing The Pond Project to out-of-state friends. Participants in Tucson Audubon Society's Desert Ecology Institute take a view of the desert back to their home states that gives them a different view of their own neighborhoods. Kerry Baldwin's Project WILD survey indicates that students have gained awareness and more responsible attitudes toward wildlife and the environment.

In the College of Education at Arizona State University, Dr. Fred Staley sees in Arizona's environmental education programs a good news bad news situation. “The good news is that environmental education is accepted: it's been institutionalized,” he says. “The bad news is that it, along with other areas of science and technology, is taking a backseat to the teaching of basic skills.” While basic skills obviously are needed for communication, Staley contends that Arizona's curriculum must be better integrated to prepare the state's children for the future.

State University, Dr. Fred Staley sees in Arizona's environmental education programs a good news bad news situation. “The good news is that environmental education is accepted: it's been institutionalized,” he says. “The bad news is that it, along with other areas of science and technology, is taking a backseat to the teaching of basic skills.” While basic skills obviously are needed for communication, Staley contends that Arizona's curriculum must be better integrated to prepare the state's children for the future.

“If children are to grow up to direct their future wisely,” he says, “they need an understanding of how the world works.” To build that understanding, Staley joins with groups like the Arizona Alliance for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education to work on curriculum reform. When Flagstaff teachers get together, they often talk about the future and wonder if their efforts are having any effect. At Thomas School, Bob Hayes says they won't know until the kids grow up and vote. Dan Smith thinks the results are showing already. He tells about a phone call he received.

“The man sounded annoyed, wanting to know, 'What are you teaching my kid? Last weekend when we were out getting wood, he made me close a rancher's gate, and he wouldn't let me cut down dead trees.' I told him I was teaching good manners. I guess he was satisfied.” Good manners to a rancher or a woodpecker-that's the answer that'll earn you an A on your environmental education quiz.

Jan Barstad, a free-lance writer, received her environmental education at Arizona State University, where she earned a master's degree in botany in 1981. She is the author of The Verde River Sheep Bridge and the Sheep Industry of Arizona, published by the U. S. Forest Service. Her husband, Ron, is a photographer and computer engineer.Resource Guide for Environmental Educators, edited by Tanna Baldwin, Arizona Association for Learning in and about the Environment, Chandler, 1986.

Selected Reading

Arizona Teachers Resource Guide for Environmental Education, Arizona Department of Education, Phoenix, 1986.

Investigating Your Environment Series, U. S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980.