Learning from the inside out

Touch a seal pelt. Hold the skull of a dolphin or a sea lion. Map out the migratory pattern of gray whales on index cards spread over a field. These touchstones and tools in the hands of a skilled teacher bring the natural world to life for children. But who trains the teachers? “We start indoors with some natural history, then move outside,” says Steve Wood, who will co-lead a class Saturday called “Maximum Marine Mammal Merriment” at the Assn. for Environmental and Outdoor Education spring conference in Petaluma, Calif. When a gray whale skeleton, like the one below, isn’t handy to convey the size of the giant mammal and the distance it travels, Wood improvises. For example, “To teach the migration of the gray whale,” he says, “we set up cards over an area about half the size of a football field. One end represents Alaska and the other is Baja California. Each card tells what would happen at that place -- for example, the animal might eat, reproduce or get struck by a container ship.” The statewide event that starts Friday is expected to draw more than 400 participants -- teachers, docents, wannabe naturalists -- to 70 workshops at Walker Creek Ranch. There will be presentations about the use of Chumash artifacts and early contemporary women climbers who tackled Mt. Rainier. Eco-issues, such as the state of wetlands conservation in San Francisco Bay and the ecology of California butterflies, are also part of the curriculum. For more information, go to www.aeoe.org.

-- Janet Cromley