Making a Difference: Parks as Classrooms : Endangered Species of Teaching

Asphalt and concrete surround inner-city children, and economics usually keeps them close to home. So it’s often hard for them to grasp the value of the natural resources found so nearby, in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, which encompasses 155,000 acres including beaches, mountain trails and Native American cultural sites.

Since 1990, the National Park Service has tried to bridge the gap with its “Parks as Classrooms” program. Last year, more than 10,000 Los Angeles and Ventura County third- through eighth-graders participated in the popular hands-on courses, some of which have a two-year waiting list.

However, the programs will end Nov. 13 unless Congress and President Clinton resolve their differences on national parks funding.

The educational effort has straightforward goals. “Instead of pigeons, the children watch hawks; they see how cultures that came before have given us some of the food, architecture and even games such as dice that we have today,” says Lorenza Fong, the recreation area’s chief of interpretation and one of several rangers who speak Spanish. Park service officials also hope to attract more minorities, who are estimated to make up fewer than 10% of visitors to national parks. “We feel we’ve been successful when we see children back with their families on the weekends sharing what they’ve learned or coming back in the summer to help,” Fong says.

HOW IT WORKS

Parks as Classrooms courses are offered from October through May. “We worked with teachers to reinforce what they are doing in social studies, history and science in class,” says Arnold Miller, who taught at Monroe High School in North Hills for three decades before becoming the recreation area’s education specialist. Donations and grants for such things as transportation and study guides for the courses below keep the cost of the courses to $4 per child.

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Biological Diversity: Third- and fourth-graders spend a day at Rancho Sierra Vista/Satwiwa in Ventura County to see how Chumash Indians lived off the land. Students taste edible native plants, master hand-crafted tools and learn how all parts of animals were put to use as food or clothing.

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Cultural Heritage: Rangers visit fourth- and fifth-graders at schools. They pass around replicas of artifacts from Native American and Mexican Ranchero cultures to show they learned from each other. Discussion is then expanded to illustrate how ethnic and racial diversity influences food, ideas and music in Southern California culture today.

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Parks as Laboratories: Sixth- and seventh-graders act as experimental mini-scientists. They collect and analyze data to help park officials monitor erosion and other changes in the natural environment.

A TEACHER’S VIEW

“These courses offer hands-on experience that is more in-depth than any text. You can talk about how tules [cattail rushes] are used to make a dwelling, but when children can see them growing and then sit inside a structure made out of them, it comes alive. It’s an invaluable way for students to connect to the past and to the land.”-MARILYN ANDERSON, Mountain View Elementary School, Tujunga

AN OBSERVER’S VIEW

“Classes like these form building blocks that create environmental awareness. We say environmental issues are vital to our survival, but in reality we waver when it comes to educating people about them. Private and nonprofit groups would be hard-pressed to pick up the slack if these classes disappear.”-ALAN WRIGHT,Professor of outdoor recreation, Cal State Northridge

To Get Involved: call (818) 597- 1036.

Researched by PATRICIA A. KONLEY / For The Times