Students Go There When It Comes to the Environment

For years, nobody has paid much attention to the narrow chaparral-covered canyon next to the playground at Torrey Pines Elementary School, and it shows. Overgrown with cattails and pampas grass and eroded by runoff water, the place is a tangled thicket--more gully than valley.

But, when Principal Dennis Doyle looks at the vacant lot, he doesn’t see a gulch. He sees a classroom--specifically, an outdoor environmental education laboratory.

Doyle’s school has applied for a state grant to restore the La Jolla canyon by building a nature trail, grooming the craggy cliffs and thinning the reed-choked stream. But, besides improving a neglected habitat, the proposal seeks to use students’ post-Earth Day enthusiasm to solve what Doyle calls his students’ “tested failure” to understand science.

“The children realize they’re going to inherit what we leave behind--that our survival is on the line,” Doyle said. And yet, that interest in the environment has not translated into scientific proficiency--when tested last year on basic science concepts, his sixth-graders comprehended only 58% of the material, Doyle laments. “We need to take what we’re teaching in the abstract and make it come alive.”

To enliven the material, Doyle, his teachers and a few committed parents have decided to make use of the prickly pears, yucca and fennel that thrive in the school’s back yard. In doing so, they have joined many other eco-conscious educators around the county who hope to capture their students’ imaginations by bringing the environment to class.

When it comes to learning about nature, these teachers say, no mind is too young.

This school year in Miramesa, first- through sixth-graders will work to save an endangered plant species--the San Diego mesa mint--by “adopting” it. In Southeast San Diego, children from kindergarten through fifth grade will put on an Environment Fair. In Solana Beach, a new program called CLAM--Coastal Lagoon and Me--will introduce fifth-graders to San Elijo Lagoon. And high-schoolers in Encinitas will build a quarter-acre chaparral desert habitat.

The area’s diverse environmental curricula and programs range from kindergarten to college level, but all are based on a simple premise: appreciation breeds conservation. By enriching book learning with experience and discovery, teachers hope to turn out more environmentally responsible students. At the same time, teachers predict, students will gain a greater understanding of science, geography and literature.

“Children so often don’t know how to observe--they’re in such a hurry,” said Beverly Trust, a second-grade teacher at Hickman Elementary School in Miramesa who helped create an adopt-a-species plan for her school. “If they start getting that power of observation, it opens up the whole world of science to them.”

“We get criticized because kids don’t know geography. But it’s no fun learning about Ohio if it doesn’t mean anything to you,” said Terri Johnson, a kindergarten teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in North Park and the chairman of the school’s Windows of the World environment curriculum--a program that introduces each grade to a different habitat, from deserts to rain forests.

“Now, when a child asks, ‘Why should I learn about Brazil?’ they’re learning that is where the paper for their favorite baseball cards come from,” she said. “By the end of six years, these kids are going to walk out of here with an incredible understanding of what’s going on in the world--and where the world is.”

Teachers say they have led the environmental charge, in large part because earthly themes enable them to teach a variety of important lessons.

“There are a lot of ways to tie (the environment) in with civic responsibility and individuals making a difference,” said Melissa Whipple, a writing lab teacher at Balboa Elementary School in Southeast San Diego, where students will put on a language, fine arts and literature fair focused on environmental themes this spring. “You can write letters (to elected officials), you can talk about global issues and talk about what to do locally.”

Teachers are careful, they say, not to put forward a single agenda. In discussing disposable versus cloth diapers, for example, Jana Swanson, a Torrey Pines Elementary School teacher, says she asks her third-graders to argue first one, and then the other side.

“Sometimes kids try to make sure they give the teacher what she wants to hear,” Swanson said. “We want to teach them to think for themselves.”

But, although they are not pushing environmental activism per se, many teachers said they believe students who have had a glimpse of the world will be more likely to protect it.

“If we’re going to have an effect, it is at this age,” said Paul Gilroy, a fourth-grade teacher at Balboa Elementary, a year-round school. In recent weeks, he has led his students on excursions to the ocean and to Scripps Aquarium to fuel their interest in their current reading assignment--a novel packed with sea otters, abalone and other marine life, called “Island of the Blue Dolphins.”

“In order to make the literature real, the kids had to see what we were studying,” Gilroy said. But, in addition to improving their reading skills, he said, the hands-on curriculum makes them more aware of the world and their place in it.

“We can plant the seed that these things are important, and if you don’t take care of them, they won’t be around,” he said. “If you can get them involved now in that, then, when they’re adults, they’ll (still) be solving problems.”

Below, a sampling of earthly delights from classrooms around the county:

Building a Desert

Jerry Trust, a biology teacher at San Dieguito High School in Encinitas, was on the way to class one day last year when he had a vision.

There, in a vacant quarter-acre plot beside the science buildings, he imagined a chaparral desert garden traversed by trails--a perfect outdoor laboratory for his 10th-, 11th- and 12th-graders. One blink reminded him that his garden was a dream, but, ever since, Trust has worked to make it real.

“Kids have lost touch with nature. That’s the essence of all our problems environmentally,” Trust said, explaining why he has begged, borrowed and hustled to get the garden built.

He won a $2,000 grant from the San Diego County Office of Education and has applied for $3,000 more from the state. But, in addition to money, he needed manpower. So, last May, when impending final exams were weighing upon students’ minds, Trust offered them extra credit to pull weeds, lay trails and dig holes for irrigation.

On two pre-summer Saturdays, more than 100 students turned out for Trust’s “work parties” at the site. A local pizzeria donated pizzas to feed the troops, one of many businesses that, after a nudge from Trust, have contributed everything from landscaping blueprints to bulldozers.

Over the next few months, landscapers will fill the area with 80 tons of rock and 20 tons of gravel donated by local companies. Then students will finish the trails, and Trust expects to begin planting lemonadeberries, sage and cacti by next spring or early fall.

When complete, the arid garden will include an endangered and rare plant nursery, a small pond and several study areas, where students will be encouraged to hone their observation skills.

“For the most part schools aren’t near natural ecosystems,” Trust said. “This is an event to establish that reconnection for the students.”

Blazing a Trail

Instead of planting lemonadeberries, Diana Snodgrass, the naturalist consultant on the Torrey Pines Elementary School nature trail project in La Jolla, knows her students’ biggest challenge will be rescuing the plants that are already there.

Snodgrass, who is vice president of the Torrey Pines State Park Docent Society, has done a thorough study of the overgrown canyon the school hopes to restore, and the inventory is impressive. There are eucalyptus trees and chaparral shrubs--California lilac, laurel sumac, manzanita, scrub oak, black sage. Among the animals that make the canyon their home, she says, are mourning doves and mockingbirds, rabbits, squirrels, skunks and a gopher snake.

Eventually, Snodgrass hopes to remove the dead wood and pampas grass that threaten to choke the canyon. But, before that transformation begins, students will document the current state of the area, blemishes and all.

“There are great examples of erosion out there and a thick, tangled mess of non-native plants,” said Candy Quaranta, a mother of third-grader, who has helped organize the project. “The kids will classify what does not belong.”

Then, provided the school receives final approval of its state grant, a contractor will be hired to clear some of the debris and make the steep hillside safe. By the end of the school year, teachers hope to have a full-fledged nature trail in place, complete with student-made labels for the flora and fauna.

“Definitely, it’s going to keep us busy,” said Betsey Biondo, a fifth-grade teacher. “But now we’ll need no buses for a field trip--we’ll just walk around the fence.”

Adopting a Species

At first glance, the vernal pool area one mile from Hickman Elementary School in Miramesa looks like a place where developers forgot to build.

Surrounded by homes, the site is one of a few in the world where the endangered San Diego mesa mint grows. But, although it is classified as a protected area by the state Department of Fish and Game, the vacant lot appears sorely in need of protectors.

That is where the Adopt-a-Species board of directors comes in--22 Hickman students from grades 1 through 6 who are determined to educate the community about the tiny purple-flowered plant.

Led by teacher Beverly Trust and Kathryn Wild, an interested parent, the students have designed a plan to make a video about the site, post warning markers and even approach the development company that owns the land to seek permission to fashion paths.

Hickman’s adopt-a-species program already has won accolades. The state Department of Education has chosen it as a model for the statewide Endangered Species Education Project, sponsored by Sen. Gary K. Hart of Santa Barbara.

In October, copies of the Hickman plan will be distributed to every school in the state. And, since Hickman’s is a model program, its students will be eligible to serve as judges to evaluate proposals next spring at the first Endangered Species Adoption Competition in Sacramento.

But the most exciting thing about the program, its leaders say, is that it teaches children that they can make a difference.

“It empowers the children,” said Trust, whose husband is the desert-building San Dieguito High School teacher. “They have heard about ozone problems, pollution, nuclear threats that they can’t do anything about. Here is something that they can do something about.”

Learning to Love a Lagoon

Barbara Moore, a co-author of the book “Walking San Diego,” spends much of her time hiking around San Elijo Lagoon, so she knows it is misunderstood.

To at least five endangered and threatened species--among them, the California brown pelican and the California least tern--the lagoon is a valuable winter resting place. But, to many humans, she laments, the wetland area is merely a place to build fires, to walk the dog without a leash or to ride bicycles off the trail.

When she and another local educator, Gail DeLalla, came up with CLAM, or Coastal Lagoons and Me, their goal was to teach Solana Beach residents in general--and its teachers and fifth-graders in particular--the error of their ways.

The twosome has been recommended for a $12,000 state grant to develop a curriculum that will use the lagoon as a field site. Lesson plans will stress individual observation--the use of binoculars and the writing of field journals--to teach students and teachers about wetland ecology.

Moore and DeLalla will also write a series of illustrated reference booklets, to help students and teachers identify what they see--Moore hopes students will keep a bird census of the 272 species of birds sighted in the lagoon.

“We want them to get a feeling that the lagoon is a wonderful place, with great creatures worth protecting,” she said. “We’re losing so much open space, so many natural habitats. The younger you start them having a feeling for it, the better off we all are going to be in the future.”