Tag: student

THERE’S iPODS IN THEM APPLE TREES!

  • If you find a wooden apple like this one in a Vermont orchard, you can turn it in for a free iPod (Photo courtesy of the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing)

Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:

Transcript

Fall is in full swing, and in the
northern states, what better way to appreciate
the time of year than to go apple picking?
It’s the fall thing to do, right? Well, not
for everyone. Lulu Miller reports:

“Ooh that’s perfect! Perfect fall day. Little Chill in the air.”

That’s orchard owner Nick Cowles and we’re here with him at his orchard.

“Beautiful apple!”

Shelburne Orchards. Near Burlington Vermont.

“Looks out over Lake Champlain.”

And to hear him to tell it, an afternoon spent apple picking is pretty much as
good as it gets.

“Yeah. There’s something about gathering food with your family that’s primal
almost. I see people show up in their cars. The dad, the face is a little pinched. He
had to get the kids in the car. They didn’t really wanna come. His whole life is
stress. And then by the time, the difference in the face when he’s leavin’, it’s just
a whole different face.”

Everyone’s dream weekend, right?

Well. Not exactly. There is one group of people who just aren’t all that thrilled
about fall leaves and apple picking.

“Well yeah. The demographics of Vermont are a little scary right now. We have
the least number of folks in there 20s in the country.”

That’s Bruce Hyde, Commissioner of Tourism for the state of Vermont. He says
the 20-somethings are missing.

“I can understand after going to one of the great colleges we have in a rural state,
that a lot of folks wanna go and experience the big cities and sow their oats.”

And so, as the guy in charge of tourism, Bruce has a mission.

“We’re really trying to attract more young people to the state of Vermont.”

And here’s what he’s up against.

Lulu Miller: “Just wondering if you guys have any plans to go apple picking this
season?”

Student: “Not really. I’m not really into apples.”

Miller: “No?”

Student: “My age? It’s kind of about the debauchery. Sleeping in on Saturdays.
Not going apple picking with the folks. You know?”

I’m talking to college students in a park near New York University.

Student: “It’s not something that I would hear my friends being like, ‘can’t hang
out on Saturday! Going apple picking!’ I just can’t imagine that coming out of
their mouths.”

So what’s a commissioner of tourism to do?

“We were trying to figure out, what’s a way to get more young people into the
orchards? So we came up with an idea. A cute little idea.”

If apples just weren’t enticing enough to lure people to Vermont, Comissioner
Hyde thought, maybe there’s something else they’d prefer to find in the trees.
Like…

“An iPod!”

That’s right in the apple trees of Vermont.

“Macintosh. Courtlans. Red delicious.”

You can find iPods.

“Nano’s. A couple of touch’s. And the just the classic iPod.”

Now they’re not actually dangling from the trees.

“What we did is we made up wooden apples. They have the state seal on them.”

And if you find that, you can turn it and get an ipod.

“Yeah. And it really has brought a lot of people into the orchards. We haven’t
done any kinda survey. But the response I’ve heard from orchards is they’ve
never seen so few apples left on the trees.”

Orchard owner Nick Cowles agrees.

“Lotta people know about it, have heard about it. ‘Come on mom, lets go look
for the iPod!’ It’s a great program. It does what it set out to do. It really helps the
orchards. They’ve been very smart to do this.”

So what do the college students think?

Student: (laughs) “They’res gonna be iPods with apples!? No way!”

Miller: “Would that make you go? Would it up the ante at all?”

Student: “It absolutely does. I would definitely go apple picking if there was a
chance I could stumble across an iPod.”

But not all of them feel that way, in fact many of them pointed out that luring
people with iPods sounds so wrong. Kinda grinds against the notion of getting
people out into nature.

“Does that feel wrong? No.”

Orchard owner Nick Cowles.

“In my estimation, anything that brings families together, outside, doing
something like that – it doesn’t get any better than that. They’re out in the
orchard, runnin’ around, picking apples – that’s healthy. They’re doin’ it as a
family.”

(boys laughing. “Hey find me an apple!”

Apples. iPods. Whatever it takes.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lulu Miller.

(sound of biting an apple)

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Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, on a Singing Hike We Go

  • Music teacher Maura Volante leading students on her "Woods Walk Singing", a singing hike (Photo by Karen Kelly)

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:

Transcript

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:


“Ooh, ah. Ooh ah. Here’s another part: aay-oh”

Maura Volante is leading a troupe of six students through a path in the forest.

It’s rainy, buggy and muddy. But everyone quickly gets into a groove – both with their
feet and with their voice.

(sound of walking song)

“There’s lots to look at all the time: the green and the shadows, the lake, the sky and all
the different vegetation. And when I’m feeling relaxed and I’m in my body and I’m
walking along and I’m in nature like that, it just makes me want to sing. It inspires me to
let my voice out.”

Volante teaches singing in Ottawa, Canada. For her, people don’t need a good voice to be
able to sing. Instead, she says singing just comes naturally to humans, like breathing and
walking. Which is why she tries to get people outside where they can experiment and
make mistakes.

“It’s kind of like recreational softball. It doesn’t matter if someone sucks at it. They can
still play. It’s for fun.”

(sound of more singing)

We spend about two hours hiking around the heavily-wooded Mud Lake.

I did some research to see if I could find any other organized singing hikes. I found one
at a bible camp in Virginia. And there’s one at a kibbutz in Israel. And, at Yellowstone
National Park? They recommend singing loudly – or shouting – to scare the bears away.

Of course, lots of people like to sing when they hike. On this walk, Kathy Woodgold
says she sings differently when she’s walking in nature.

“When we’re in the woods, it brings sort of a primitive spirit. Like, I’m thinking, let’s
pretend we’re not civilized, instincts, and so on. And maybe that opens up a creative
spirit. It frees us to sing random notes, instead of having to feel like we have to do a
predefined melody.”

This isn’t really a conservationist group. But teacher Maura Volante says, in some small
way, doing this helps the planet.

“I think there is a benefit to the environment for people to sing more because that gets
them to appreciate nature more and appreciating nature helps you be committed to
preserving it.”

(sound of singing “O Canada”)

The small group stops at a dock overlooking Mud Lake for their only performance of the
day. The audience? Ducks, frogs and mosquitoes.

But they give it their all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Pollution and Classroom Performance

  • Researchers at the University of Michigan are looking to see if air pollution is a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance. (Source: Motown31 at Wikimedia Commons)

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Scientists are investigating whether
air pollution is affecting how well students
perform. Lester Graham reports:

Researchers say we might be building schools in the wrong places. We build them
near interstates full of polluting cars and trucks, and we build schools downwind of
factories. Kids might be getting a big dose of air pollution everyday they’re at school.

Researchers at the University of Michigan want to look at whether it’s actually
affecting kids. Paul Mohai is the lead researcher.

“School-aged children are particularly vulnerable because their bodies are growing.
They’re considered a vulnerable population and that’s all the more reason we should
be looking at the toxic burden that they may face, both in the schools that they go to
and where they live.”

Mohai and his colleagues will look at all the social and economic issues, and then air
pollution to see if it’s a factor in school kids’ health and academic performance.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Teacher Brings Adventures to the Classroom

  • Fourth-grade teacher Robin Frisch-Gleason on a research trip to Antarctica (Photo courtesy of Robin Frisch-Gleason)

Kids can watch all kinds of TV shows, movies,
and DVDs about science and nature. But it’s not the
same as talking to a researcher who’s actually been
to remote places in the world. Kyle Norris reports
when that researcher is your fourth-grade teacher it
makes everything very real:

Transcript

Kids can watch all kinds of TV shows, movies,
and DVDs about science and nature. But it’s not the
same as talking to a researcher who’s actually been
to remote places in the world. Kyle Norris reports
when that researcher is your fourth-grade teacher it
makes everything very real:

Okay, so guess where we are.

“Good morning, Slausson School. Good morning.”

It’s a school assembly.

So the woman talking is Robin Frisch-Gleason. She’s a fourth grade teacher. And before
that she was a geologist. And she loves polar regions. She says she loves their vastness
and their emptiness.

A couple months ago she went to Antarctica to study the rocks. And to learn more about
how to teach kids about polar regions.

Now that’s she’s back, she does stuff like this assembly, and tells kids about her trip.
This is her explaining how geologists drill the ice and then pull-up core samples of rock.

“I explain it by saying think about putting a straw in milkshake. You put a straw down.
The very top of the milkshake is the top of the seafloor. And then you press down, maybe
to bottom of cup, and when you cover the straw with your finger and pull it back up, you
have a core of milkshake. And that’s just like we take up a core of rock.”

She says the rocks are like a book, and they tell a story about the past. The scientists in
Antarctica are actually reading the rocks. And they’re trying to find out if the ice melted
when the climate got warmer in the past. So that they can predict what will happen to the
ice as the climate continues to warm in the future.

Robin Frisch-Gleason wants to kids to know that polar regions are vulnerable to climate change.

“And they should be aware of it, and as they grow up it should influence their decisions, their
voting, their career choices, and their own personal behaviors.”

But ultimately she wants to make learning fun. And like alive. Back in her fourth-grade
classroom, the kids do a lot of hands-on activities.

(clapping)

Like imitating the way penguins communicate through penguin calls. But in this case, by
clapping their hands in a certain pattern, and trying to find other kids who have their
same pattern.

In another activity, they wear different types of insulated gloves – like a glove lined with
cotton, or a glove lined with fat – and they stick it into icy water, to see which is warmer.

“It’s fun to stick your hand in things. It’s hands-on like he said, it’s fun doing hands-on
stuff, it’s fun trying out different things. And it’s fun because you’re really trying to
experiment on stuff. You’re experimenting with science and it’s really fun at the same
time.”

Plus the kids say that it’s cool having a teacher go to Antarctica and come back and teach
everybody all these cool things. They say it’s even given them some street-cred amongst other kids at
other schools.

Here’s 4th grader Cole Magoon:

“And it’s kind of like have a famous person be your teacher.”

The kids say that doing fun, hands-on activities actually makes them want to pay more
attention. And this kind of learning not only sparks their critical thinking and problem-
solving skills, but it’s also a great way to get kids psyched about science and math. And
learning from a person who’s actually been in the field seems to amplify all this.

And it gets kids thinking about the world they live in, and the world they’ll have to take
care of.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Hemingway’s Paradise Lost

  • Students do 'the Hemingway thing' (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Transcript

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Say what you want about Ernest Hemingway’s writing, the man loved his North Woods.
Up until his early twenties, he spent almost every summer up north at his family’s cottage
in Michigan.

And it’s there where most of The Nick Adams Stories take place.

“They were walking on the brown forest floor now and it was springy and cool under
their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the trees rose sixty feet high
before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high up in
them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising.”

This is Nick Adams country in the early 1900s. The Last Good Country, Hemingway
called it. Filled with cathedral-like forests and streams swimming with big fat trout.

Now, it’s said that some of The Nick Adams Stories are based on Hemingway’s own
experiences in the north woods. Especially the parts in the book about hunting and
fishing.

“That was one of his favorite things to do.”

Valerie Hemingway was with the author when he wrote The Nick Adams Stories. Before
she married into the family, she was Hemingway’s secretary and occasional fishing
buddy. She says Hemingway used to go on and on about the good old days back in
northern Michigan.

“He taught me how to shoot a gun, told me about the river fishing – and these were
things that were initially associated with Michigan. And I think Michigan
represented the freedom in his life.”

But if Hemingway went up north today, he probably wouldn’t recognize the place.

“I think we’ve done our share of damaging it. And I’m sure there are areas where we
can still find something that he found, but it would be few and far between.”

Mary Crockett just finished The Nick Adams Stories. She read it as part of a state-wide
reading project put on by the local chapter of the National Endowment for the
Humanities. The reason The Nick Adams Stories was chosen for the great state read was
because of its obvious ties to Michigan and the north woods.

But Adam and Eva Colas
just read the book in a high school writing class. They’ve lived in Michigan their entire
lives, and they can’t relate to Hemingway’s North Woods at all.

“It doesn’t feel really representative of Michigan to me, cause it’s not the Michigan I know.”

“Cause even if you go to
Lake Michigan now for camping, there are specific pits for bonfires and specific cabins and all
these designated areas that make sure you don’t get lost or hurt, and you don’t have
to do anything for yourself.”

Their teachers thought that might happen, so they came up with the next best thing. An
outdoor classroom where the students can talk about the stories while doing what Adam
and Eva Colas call ‘the Hemingway thing’.

“The nature, hiking, canoeing. We can’t do the hunting/fishing thing, but just sort
of experiencing nature as nature.”

“Michigan as it was back in the day when this takes
place.”

See, that’s the beauty of a good book. Virginia Murphy teaches a class on Environmental
Literature at the University of Michigan. She says just because the students can’t
experience Hemingway’s world as it was back in the day, doesn’t mean they can’t learn
from his words.

“It allows them to see an environment that they’re not necessarily exposed to on a
daily basis. Most of us live in cities, drive our cars, work in buildings. And so it offers us a
perspective that we don’t have.”

So even if you never got to experience the north woods with all the big open spaces and
virgin forests and clear blue streams, well, there’s always the public library.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

Related Links

Migrant Workers: Reaping Education

  • The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. (Photo by Gary Harwood )

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are dictated by the growing season:

Transcript

Lots of farm workers in the U.S. are migrants from Mexico and other southern places.
Many farm owners say they couldn’t be profitable growing food without these migrants.
But the workers are growing something of their own: children. The children are often
uprooted. Julie Grant reports on the challenges of educating children whose lives are
dictated by the growing season:


In this farm town another house or trailer empties nearly every night. The growing season
is over and migrant workers are leaving, headed to Florida, Texas, Mexico, or someplace
else. That means their children will be pulled out of school. Cyndee Farrell is principal
of the elementary school:


“They’ll just not show up. Sometimes we get word, ‘Oh, we’re leaving tomorrow.’ Other
times, if the weather changes over the weekend or whatever happens and they just decide,
oh, we’re going to leave, they pack up and go. They know they can count on us being here when
they return, and we make it work.”


The migrant children leave as most students are just settling in to the semester.


For some migrants, it’s the only schooling they’ll get until they return to Ohio in April or
May, just a few weeks before the end of the school year.


Lisa Hull teaches reading to 4th and 5th graders. She says the migrants add a whole new
culture to this rural school. They laugh a lot and almost always seem happy.


But she says they don’t treat the classroom like the American kids:


“They don’t value education as well as i would say a normal, typical American would.
They have a different lifestyle. They’re easy going. We’re into all the possessions and
stuff, whereas they don’t really care if they have anything.”


The migrant children spend a lot of time with their families. The families are close and
they stay close. In their culture, life revolves around family and community events. One
person’s birthday is usually reason enough for an entire migrant neighborhood to
celebrate.


(Sound of knocking on door)


“Where is everybody?”


It’s Friday night and neighbor Pat Moore drops in on the Soto Family. They’ve just come
in from weeding lettuce in the fields. They’ve been migrating to rural Ohio from outside
Mexico City for more than a decade. The three ‘boys’ are all grown now and have
become U.S. citizens. They all graduated from Mexican high schools. 21 year-old
Alberto Soto also wanted a diploma from an American high school, so he stayed in this
town of Hartville on his own one winter:


“That year, I saw the snow for my first time. Here, it was too cold.”


The whole family is gathered in the living room: all three brothers, two younger sisters.
The mother and father don’t speak English, but they sit and listen, as Alberto Soto
explains why he stayed in Ohio that year:


“To finish my high school, I was in 12th grade. So I think that was important for me.
To get my diploma so I can get a better job, so they can pay me more. An easy job. Not
too hard like in the fields.”


Soto says he cried when his family left. He was lonely. But even after staying that
winter, he still hadn’t learned enough to graduate. He quit school and he’s been working
in the fields with his family since then. His 19 year-old brother Marco Soto has also
become an expert at weeding lettuce. Marco says it’s hard, boring work and he wants to
do something else:


“I think everything is going to be the same every year. And you are not going to learn something to do something because here, is almost the same. Like what you do everyday is going to be the same, like if you want to stay here for the rest of your life, it’s gonna be the same thing and you are not going to learn anything.”


Educators say most migrants need more schooling to improve their lives, but foreign-
born Hispanic students have the highest dropout rate in the U.S. The migrant
neighborhoods in the Hartville area are looking dark these days, but they’ll spring back to
life when the growing season begins again. The public school teachers say they’ll do
their best to keep working with the students who return.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Environmental Superheroes

  • Super Rachel confronts Chemical Man before they duel. (Photo courtesy of the Shakespeare in the Schools Program at the University of Pittsburgh)

Drama is a unique way to connect children with their textbooks. That’s why a play on the achievements of Rachel Carson might be coming to a classroom near you. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton reports on how the life of one prominent environmentalist is teaching students about
science:

Transcript

Drama is a unique way to connect children with their textbooks.
That’s why a play on the achievements of Rachel Carson might be coming to
classroom near you. The Great Lake Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton
reports on how the life of one prominent environmentalist is teaching
students about science:


The office of Professor Buck Favorini is in a tall gothic tower. It was the inspiration for Gotham City in the first Batman movie. Inside his tower at the University of Pittsburgh, Professor Favorini has his own superhero story. His children’s play, Rachel Carson Saves the Day, is a science lesson in the language of children.


“We have used the sort of idiom of superheroes in the play, because it’s a way of teaching kids about science that they can understand simply by looking keenly at the world around them.”


Favorini says if Rachel Carson hadn’t been smart, bold, and risky, pesticides like DDT might still be in wide use. Some people honored her for her book Silent Spring. Others saw her as a reckless, unpredictable scientist threatening their chemical superhero.


“People made some of the worst chemicals in the world launched a very expensive campaign to undermine Rachel Carson’s scientific abilities partly based on the fact that she was a woman.”


Perched on a hill, overlooking another part of Pittsburgh, is Spring Hill Elementary.


LOUDSPEAKER: “Third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers, we’ll call you to the
assembly as soon as the staff sets up in the auditorium. Thanks.”


The staff is actor Elena Block and stage manager Josh Futrell. They hustle to assemble silver pipes of scaffolding and hang two white screens.


“There are two DVD players that do these great images that do these scenes from science and pictures of Rachel Carson. Sort of become this floating back drop.”


While Block is on stage as Rachel Carson, Futrell controls the images, music, and the voice of “Little Rachel’s” Mother.


FICTIONAL MOTHER: “Alice in Wonderland is your breakfast companion again.”


FICTIONAL RACHEL: “Oh Mama, I love this book, and so does Candy when I read it to her.”


(Sound of barking)


The play begins with Rachel as a young girl. She grows up quickly to become a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her scientific observations reveal chemicals like DDT are contaminating waterways and silently creeping up the food chain.


FICTIONAL RACHEL: “This is the bird. The bird that ate the clam, that ate the
plankton, that swam in the ocean, fed by the stream, that carried the
chemical Jack-”


CHILDREN: “Sprayed!”


(Sound of clock ticking)


FICTIONAL RACHEL: “I’m in the late afternoon of my life and I am so angry. The next book I right is going to make a lot of noise.”


(Sound of “Mighty Mouse” theme)


To write Silent Spring, the passionate scientist/writer rips away her dress
to reveal a green superhero suit. Quickly Super Rachel is attacked by a man who’s face is hidden behind a long
pointed gasmask.


(Sound of fighting)


The Chemical industry attacks Rachel for her ideas. Images of nature and chemical compounds flash on the screens behind them. Super Rachel uses cartwheels and karate chops to over power Chemical Man.


(Sound of hip hop battle)


CHEMICAL MAN: “The bugs are buggin’ me.”


FICTIONAL RACHEL: “The chemicals are killin’ me.”


CHEMICAL MAN: “We’re gonna hit ’em from the air.”


FICTIONAL RACHEL: “How can you not care?”


Super Rachel prevails and DDT is officially banned in 1972.


(Sound of applause)


After the play, it’s clear the students of Spring Hill Elementary were paying attention.


GIRL: “She was trying to think of better ways to kill the insects instead of just polluting them.”


BOY: “I think she thought it was really important about the environment, and I think that’s good, because most people don’t.”


Not everyone agrees with the conclusions of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring. Some scientists say Carson misrepresented existing 1950’s data on bird reproduction, and others say the very threat of malaria in developing countries should trump possible environmental threats of DDT. Actress Elena Block thinks despite these criticisms, Rachel Carson’s story has much to offer children.


“If they can sort of come away the idea with the idea that you can exact change being yourself from the place that you’re from. I think that’s pretty good, don’t you?”


Rachel Carson Saves the Day starts its second year of touring this fall, and perhaps it’s fun, multimedia look at environmental protection will inspire America’s next generation of intrepid scientists.


For the GLRC, I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Making the Environmental Field More Diverse

Later this month, a group of students and professors
in the Great Lakes region are holding a national conference aimed at creating more diversity in the environmental field. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Later this month, a group of students and professors in the Great Lakes region are holding a national conference aimed at creating more diversity in the environmental field. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The Minority Environmental Leadership Initiative at the University of Michigan is holding the conference. It’s for students, leaders of environmental non-profit groups and government agencies, and environmental faculty at universities.


Professor Dorceta Taylor says the conference will look at why the level of minority hiring in the environmental field is still so low, and what can be done about it.


“The environment affects everyone, and it could be a far more effective movement if it involved a larger cross section of the population.”


Taylor says many environmental organizations say they’d like to hire more minority graduates, but don’t know how to find or recruit them. Organizers say they hope the conference will connect employers with minority students looking for jobs.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Kids Get a Hands-On Outdoor Education

  • Instead of a traditional classroom, the students of Goodwillie Environmental School are learning outside. (Photo by Michel Collot)

Most 5th and 6th graders right now are enjoying outdoor activities during their summer vacation. But at one public school, the outdoors is part of the curriculum, year round. The school aims to turn kids who love the outdoors into lifelong stewards of the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

Most fifth and sixth graders right now are enjoying outdoor activities
during their summer vacation, but at one public school, the outdoors is
part of the curriculum, year-round. The school aims to turn kids who love
the outdoors into lifelong stewards of the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports.


(Sound of sawing wood)


Sawing logs is hard work, especially for fifth graders like Amelia, Leoni,
and Taylor. The results can be seen in this rustic, but sturdy log cabin
overlooking the Goodwillie Environmental School. The cabin was built almost
entirely by the fifth grade class in half hour shifts, because the work is
so demanding.


“We worked on the chinking, the floor inside here – I did that
chinking! And then we worked on the floor inside here – and
when we get enough bricks, that’s what the fireplace is going to look like.”


The students get most of their instruction in science, math, history, and
other subjects as they hike through the woods or work on an outdoor project
like the cabin. Of course, they spend some of their time in the classrooms
in the southwest Michigan school. But today, volunteer George Stegmeyer is
building a kiln, where he will fire raw bricks for the cabin’s fireplace. The
bricks were made by the students with mud they dug from the grounds.
Stegmeyer explains how the hot air will move through the kiln and then blast
through the chimney.


“Just like firing pottery, it reconfigures the molecules so that they are no longer water-soluble.”


The students call Stegmeyer “grandpa,” an example of the extended family
atmosphere of the school. Only about fifty children are selected each year:
the ones who show a passion for the outdoors. Parent Peter Chan says it’s
not for every kid, but he wishes all school districts had an option like
this.


“I spent from sunup to sundown, most of the time, I can remember playing outdoors, if not exploring

the fields, the farmer orchard, or the woods by my house. Unfortunately
today, children don’t have that experience.”


Chan went to a similar school when he was young. He’s now a meteorologist.
He’s enthusiastic about his son having the same opportunity. Some of the
parents might worry that their child could fall behind in traditional
coursework here. But fifth-grade teacher Rick Gillett says there’s nothing
to fear. Students consistently score one hundred on the state’s annual standardized
test, all without “teaching to the test.”


“For instance, in the science test, when you get into the physics, in inclined planes and pulleys,

when you’ve actually used them in building the log cabin, it makes sense. You really understand how

the physics work.”


Gillett says he doesn’t expect every student in the outdoor school to become
a biologist or forest ranger, but he does expect the school to make a
lasting difference. He says some of his former students have come back
to see him when they’ve reached college age. He says that’s when it really
seems to sink in how much they learned here.


“I really do… I think that once it’s in your heart you’re never going to get it out of
there.”


That already seems to be the case with most of the students. Fifth-graders
Spencer and Evan can’t wait until sixth grade, when they’ll have a chance to
tackle a project in the Native American village that’s tucked into the woods
below the log cabin. They show off the two buildings that previous sixth
graders built: an Ojibwa smokehouse and a winterhouse.


“This is the inner bark of basswood it basically ties whole thing together, holds it up. These go

down about five feet into the ground, these go down about ten feet into the ground, so as you can

see it’s very, very sturdy.”


This fall, a brand new group of fifth graders will arrive at Goodwillie
Environmental School. They’ll take up where the last class left off and
build the fireplace for the cabin. Along the way, they will also pick up
the knowledge, experience, and passion for the outdoors that will help them
be lifelong stewards of the earth in years to come.


For the GLRC, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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Teachers Criticized for Evolution Lessons

  • Some teachers are struggling with teaching evolution because some disagree on religious grounds. (Photo by Elliot Jordan)

Science teachers in high schools and middle schools are on the front lines of the culture wars. Conservative Christians and others are confronting them about teaching evolution in the classroom. At the same time, teachers are learning about the growing body of evidence that supports the theory of evolution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Science teachers in high schools and middle schools are on the front lines of the culture wars. Conservative Christians and others are confronting them about teaching evolution in the classroom. At the same time, teachers are learning about the growing body of evidence that supports the theory of evolution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


Some science teachers got a chance to attend a major science conference recently. Researchers from around the world were in Akron, Ohio to present findings and learn about advances in evolutionary biology. The conference was organized by people studying the dramatic transition whales made when they moved from the land to the water.


It’s only been a few years since Ohio even allowed the concept of evolution into the state’s high school academic standards. Those standards are the basis for the state graduation test that students must pass to get a diploma.


Even though it’s part of the state curriculum, many science teachers get the brunt of complaints from students and parents who oppose teaching evolutionary theory.


THOMAS: “I did have a student come to me and literally say, ‘I cannot sit in this classroom and listen to what you’re talking about.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m a Christian, I can’t listen to this.’ I said, ‘Well, I’m a Christian too, so where’s the problem?’”


GRABERT: “Well, I’ve had a number whose fathers are ministers come in and tell me how I need to teach the class, and I have to talk about creationism and I just share with them what we have to teach and how the curriculum is.”


STONE: “There’s a point when you just sort of have to tell the kids, This is what you need to know to pass the test to get out of high school. So, sit down, listen, learn the facts you need to know. I’m not saying you have to believe what I say, but this is what the state says you need to know to get out of high school.”


These are teachers from rural, suburban, and city school districts but they are all dealing with this issue. They try to stay up to date on new scientific evidence to defend their classroom lessons. That’s part of the reason they’re at this science conference.


(Sound of lecture)


This day’s activities are geared toward schoolteachers. The world’s top researchers on whale evolution are explaining their latest findings. Ann Sowd teaches honors biology at Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio.


“It’s important to be at workshops like this so that you can, as a high school teacher, be really accurate with your teachings and understand what the evidence for evolution is and why it’s really- what we do know about how organisms change over time. Because the worst thing that can happen is you’re inaccurate and then someone comes with the opposing argument and you don’t know what you’re talking about.”


The teachers are hearing from scientists from all kinds of disciplines from anatomy, to functional morphology, to geo-chemistry. The scientists are showing how their discoveries and analyses fit together and provide a picture of the evolution of the whale as it moved from land back to the ocean.


But one leading researcher says the schoolteachers need more than just new scientific research to defend their lessons in the classroom. Howard University anatomist Daryl Domning says students who question evolutionary evidence are often looking for answers that lie beyond the realm of science. But Domning says teachers often respond with the latest research and recent fossil discoveries.


“And then they’re amazed that it doesn’t convince them. Because even though they’re raising questions about scientific evidence, they’re really not passionate about the scientific evidence. They’re passionate about ‘what is the meaning of my existence?’ and until you get down to that level and surface those concerns and show that hey, evolution doesn’t mean there’s no meaning to your existence, on the contrary, it can mean all these things, it means there’s more meaning then you thought there was maybe, only then is there a way of breaking through this pattern of talking past each other, which is what we’ve been doing for thirty years here.”


Domning says teachers can help students and parents understand that accepting the evidence of evolutionary theory doesn’t have to undermine religious faith.
He encourages teachers to tell students they can believe both at the same time, to point them to places where they can get more information, and to quickly get back to the science lesson.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

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