Rangers Teach a Lesson in Nature, Heritage

A pair of National Park Service rangers brought the outdoors to the classroom Thursday, fascinating a group of Thousand Oaks fourth-graders with tales of Chumash and Spanish origin in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The children in Joyce Wheatly’s Acacia Elementary School class formed semicircles around the two rangers, fondling furs, feathers and musical instruments. Each student, in the role of an anthropologist for the morning, was asked to tell the group what the various items were used for in Native American culture.

Ranger George Roberts held up a spray of feathers.

“What do you suppose this is?” Roberts asked.

“It’s a duster,” 10-year-old Corey Grund volunteered.

Roberts held up a picture of an ap, the igloo-like thatched hut that housed the Chumash. “They lived in a place like this. Do you think they used a duster?” he asked.

The children giggled and seemed impressed when Roberts put it behind his head to show how it was worn as an adornment. Next, he asked a group of boys to tell him about a collection of fur strips sewn together to make a baby’s blanket by night, a small jacket by day.

Franky Herrera looked at one of the strips. “It’s a rat,” he declared.

The rangers, one a volunteer and the other a staff member at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, come to the schools regularly to present the program, One Land: Many People, Many Ways. It is one of three curriculum programs offered by the Santa Monicas and one of several under the National Park Service umbrella program called Parks as Classrooms.

“The kids love it,” said Ranger Jack Gillooly, who was observing on Thursday but also teaches in the program. “Anything having to do with animals and they go wild.”

The One Land program is as popular with teachers, who are now backed up on a two-year waiting list. It seeks to teach schoolchildren about the people who preceded them in the area and how they lived.

The program also introduces children to the country’s national parks and the Santa Monica Mountains in particular.

The rangers show the children their embroidered arm patches, which depict trees, mountains and animals. “It represents all the cultures we protect in all our parks,” Gillooly said.