Nature as Teacher : Youths Learn to Appreciate the Environment at Outdoor Schools

The classroom was a 130-acre spread in the Ojai Valley. And the bedrooms of the fourth-graders from Ventura’s E.P. Foster Elementary School were huge tepees clustered in a grove of oak trees by a creek.

After two days at Rancho del Rey’s outdoor school this week, the 73 students had seen mountain lion tracks, learned how the Chumash Indians survived in the wilds, and hiked in the mountains at twilight.

The experience was designed to put them in touch with nature and instill an appreciation for it. For some, it was a novel experience.

“Some of these kids have never been on a hike away from their own immediate area,” said DeLoy Hanson, superintendent of the outdoor school.

For the last three years, the outdoor school located on Burnham Road overlooking the Ventura River has been open to schools for stays of up to five days during the spring. This year about 300 students from five Ventura area schools will spend time there.

Other students from around the county might get a taste of nature at another outdoor education facility in nearby Matilija Canyon. Last year 1,084 students spent one or two days at MESA, an outdoor camp sponsored jointly by Matilija Environmental Science Area and the Ventura County Superintendent of Schools Office.

But many schools throughout the county take outdoor education beyond county lines.

In Camarillo, sixth-graders spend five days at Lake Cachuma near Santa Barbara, sleeping in trailers. In Thousand Oaks, sixth-graders go to Camp Bloomfield near Malibu for five days.

Fifth-graders at a handful of Ventura elementary schools travel to Catalina Island every March for three days at the Catalina Island Marine Institute. There they hike, learn to snorkel, and study plant and animal life on the island.

What they learn can’t be gleaned as easily from books, according to Jeff Nelsen, principal at Ventura’s Lincoln Elementary School. Experience is a far more effective tool, he said.

“You can understand the facts about what is under the ocean, but until you experience it--hold a sea slug--you don’t know what it means,” Nelsen said. Science that is alive is far more interesting, and more likely to be retained by students, he said.

Nelsen said outdoor education has been used by Ventura schools for two decades, but the growing interest in the environment has boosted the concept.

“We’re seeing more people recognize how important it is--how intricately balanced the whole environment is,” he said.

However, most school districts are so strapped for money, a trek to Catalina Island or Rancho del Rey isn’t an educational experience they can afford. Usually, students pay for the trips or they hold fund-raisers.

Lincoln fifth-graders held a jog-a-thon to defray some of the $140-per-student cost. Kids from E.P. Foster sold popcorn and McDonald’s food coupons to pay for their stay at Rancho del Rey which charges $115 for five days, or $25-$28 per day.

It was worth it, according to Jeff Wilson, one of the fourth-graders from E.P. Foster who camped out at Rancho del Rey this week.

“It was like school, but not as pressured,” Jeff said. “We got to play and do things.” Although sleeping in an authentic tepee was “weird for a while.”

The students hiked near the Ventura River, learning about plant and animal life, and how the Chumash survived on natural resources found in the environment, such as acorns from oak trees.

“It was like a supermarket,” said student Andy Webber, amazed at the survival skills of the Chumash.

While rabbits hopped nearby, the students played a game on the grass to better understand how the deer population needs adequate food, water and shelter.

They also played a game called Mystery Bones. Faced with tables of bones of all different sizes and shapes, they had to identify the animals from which they came.

Time is set aside for pure recreation--like the water balloon race in which team members quickly pass the balloons under their legs and over their heads. The camp has a gigantic treehouse near the campground where the tepees sit on wood platforms. Nearby a bridge made of wood slats and rope handles crosses a creek.

In the evening, they joined hands around a campfire and learned a Chumash social dance. A few parents spent the night in the tepees or in tents with the students.

Rancho del Rey, a rolling spread dotted with oak and sycamore trees, has been an interdenominational Christian conference center since 1980. It is managed by a board of directors whose members represent several churches in the county.

However, the outdoor school has no religious overtones, according to Hansen, a retired public school teacher. But some kids come away from the experience with a new respect for the environment.

“I’ve had kids come and start killing everything,” said Sue Mills, a biologist who teaches at the outdoor school. She gives them a little lecture about being a guest in the home of the animals.

While she taught them the game about deer, a couple of rabbits joined them on the grass, causing a flurry of excitement.

“Stand still,” she cautioned. “Then the animal hangs around.”