Hands-on, Ears-on, Nose-on

Jane Lane first walks into classrooms in Dorchester and Worcester, Massachusetts, carrying skulls and pelts of deer and raccoon.  By the time this volunteer urban educator sees the children later at the Eastern Massachusetts Refuge Complex, she says, “they are over-the-top with excitement to begin their explorations.”  The complex hosts 130 third graders three times each school year.  

Visitor Services Manager Michael Dixon echoes most refuge educators when he says “school administrators are reluctant to permit field trips if they do not support some facet of the state public school curriculum standards.” So the Eastern Massachusetts Refuge Urban Education Program addresses such curriculum objectives as making observations to identify organisms and understanding life cycles, an ecosystems and animal adaptations to winter or spring.

The Urban Education Program is run entirely by volunteers like Lane, who says the refuge visits provide not just hands-on activities, but ears-on (listening for the calls of birds or the sound of the wind) and nose-on (smelling a sassafras leaf or the marshy odor of the wind off the lowland river) activities.  Before leaving the refuge, children write a note to a 75-year-old oak tree and receive a “refuge ranger” badge made of an oak tree cookie.

Rattlesnake Rattles and Eagle Talons

Refuges must work creatively since budgets have been tightening or even disappearing for field trips and environmental education.  The 72-acre Two Ponds National Wildlife Refuge, about 15 miles northwest of Denver, has lent its big green trunk to more than a dozen schools over the past year. The trunk is designed for all ages, though it is used primarily by elementary schools,  and includes DVDs, games, books, a digital camera, activity guides (such as exploring the schoolyard, water education, and teaching children about the environment with picture books) and such artifacts as rattlesnake rattles, coyote skull and an eagle talon.  Two Ponds Refuge is also developing a conservation stewardship project for short-grass prairie habitat at a predominantly Hispanic middle school in Denver.

Patuxent Research Refuge Outdoor Educator Jennifer Hill held a popular Geo-Camp at Smothers Elementary School in Washington, D.C. rather than at the Maryland refuge when transportation funds were not available.  Fourth and fifth graders learned about the value of habitats for wildlife around their school and neighborhood and wrote their own rap song:

I don’t know, but I’ve been told…
Litterers are mighty cold.
They never pick up any trash.
Now it’s stuck between the grass.
If we don’t clean it, who will do it?
Come on ya’ll, let’s get to it.

When Hill visited the school recently to make arrangements for this summer’s camp, she said, “I saw a lot of the students from years past who immediately ran up to me and wanted to know when the camp was, and could they come back.  I love that.”

Birders Across the Ages

The overwhelming majority of children at Patterson Elementary School in Philadelphia come from families living below the poverty line. Twenty of those children—carefully selected for their motivation and interest in nature—come to John Heinz at Tinicum National Wildlife Refuge every week to go birding with members of the suburban Delaware County Birding Club.  Maury Hutelmyer, the Patterson science teacher who organized the activity, says the children return to school with their mentors to write up what they’ve learned about “their” birds in a computer, including red shouldered hawks, red winged blackbirds, great blue herons, egrets and ducks. 

Hutelmyer and Longstreth Elementary School Teacher Chuck Lafferty have taken most of the professional development workshops organized by the refuge’s environmental education specialist Erika Scarborough.  Lafferty grew up near Tinicum Marsh before it became a refuge, cutting cattails his blind uncle used to make cane chairs.  His kindergarteners regularly plant vegetables and flowers in a vacant lot near their classroom.

Two years ago, after a city contractor allowed a house that was being demolished to fall on the garden, the Friends of Heinz Refuge helped publicize the incident and ultimately won damages from the city and the contractor to restore the habitat.  Kindergarteners now harvest marigold and sunflower seeds from the garden and package them for sale in the Friends of Heinz bookstore.

During one visit to the schoolyard habitat, a little boy was sitting next to a butterfly bush when a monarch almost landed on his head. “Why did that butterfly almost land?” Lafferty asked.  “Because he was sitting still and the butterfly wasn’t afraid.  When you sit still in nature, you can see things.”  Within seconds, recalls Lafferty, there were 16 small children sitting quietly under the butterfly bush.

Karen Leggett is editor of Refuge Update, the National Wildlife Refuge System’s bimonthly newsletter.  This article was originally published in Refuge Update, May-June 2007

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