When People Care, Nature Returns
“Let the kids take a turn with the hoe, too,” urges Laurette Rogers in the film, “A Simple Question — The Story of STRAW.” STRAW is the acronym for Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed. And the kids could be first-graders or fifth-graders, or even high school students, depending on which class has come out that day to restore nature through hands-on project-based learning. A former teacher herself, Laurette runs STRAW as part of the education component of PRBO Conservation Science. They are all there to undertake the earth’s recovery from human abuse and to put their education to actual use — to make a contribution to both nature and their own community. This approach to learning goes by many names: Project-based learning, Place-based education, Service-learning. Regardless of what it’s called or how it’s expressed, it is profound because of demonstrated, positive outcomes — it’s impact on the kids, the teachers, the community, and the earth.
Student Competency
STRAW begins with bold declarations:
Kids are part of the wider community
Kids are competent now
Kids need to be leaders now
Kids want to, and can, contribute to their world in meaningful ways
Kids are capable of high-level, valuable work
There is an urgency inherent in these declarations because they fully honor kids’ ability to have an impact on their world now, not later when they’re grown up. The environmental problems and challenges that we currently face don’t just affect adults, they impact children’s lives, too. Children aren’t shielded from the ravages of climate change, species extinction, pollution, and deforestation. The disempowering assumption, however, is that they are too young and ill-equipped to do anything about these matters. It is understood that these kinds of complex issues are better left to the adults to “solve.” Meanwhile, kids study within the protective walls of schools so that one day, as adults, they’ll get a crack at solving them, too. In other words, they practice to be adults, who apparently are the only ones who can make a difference. STRAW declares otherwise, and the success of STRAW proves otherwise.
The Learning Opportunity
It’s true that kids are small and inexperienced. BUT, they are enthusiastic, curious, kinesthetic and eager to participate in their world. STRAW began with a student’s simple question: “What can we do to help endangered species?” If clearly heard, it’s quite a disarming question, and Laurette Rogers clearly heard it that day, many years ago, in her classroom. She heard it for the plea that it was, from students wanting to have a say in how their world should go. Fortunately, her school’s administration fully supported curricular improvisation, leading to a year-long class project to save a local species, the California freshwater shrimp. That the effort would require greatly expanded knowledge and a multitude of skills was precisely the educational point. Need would, and did, drive accelerated learning — in language, math, science, research, composition, planning and organizing, analysis, public speaking and communication, outreach, and teamwork, to name just a few areas.
Suddenly, the classroom work wasn’t merely simulated or theoretical, it was practical and driven by necessity. Kids undertook their education as part of a mission to save a beleaguered local species for which they were now its guardian. Their learning was informed by purpose, making their participation personal and meaningful. They were on such new ground that they couldn’t rely exclusively on their teacher for guidance; they had to also teach one anther. When students are invested in their own education, the learning becomes inspired, taking the enterprise to a much higher level. For Laurette and her kids, class work became something transcendent — a year-long effort of self-propelled skill-building and problem-solving.
Beyond the Classroom
What animates place-based education projects like STRAW and gives them such power is connection to the wider community and issues facing the wider community. Schools tend to be isolated, shielding kids from the uncertainties and complexities embodied in the world outside. Yet schools are part and parcel to the rest of the world. The challenge lies in figuring out how to link the two productively. Faced with a daunting ecological and community problem, Laurette and her kids were compelled to reach beyond the school walls to the outside world in a myriad of ways. Scientists and researchers were consulted, as were resource managers and government agency personnel. Local leaders, politicians, and journalists were all contacted and engaged. And then there was the ranching community — private property owners whose participation was absolutely essential to the kids’ efforts to save a species.
The habitat for the endangered species just happened to be on the surrounding ranchland. Clearly, the ranchers were key to the shrimp’s survival, but in their research, the kids discovered that ranching practices had put the animal in jeopardy in the first place. Imagine the challenge they faced in working constructively with these very ranchers to repair habitat on their land. In all the preceding years, adults hadn’t been able to effectively do it. How could the children? From a place-based education perspective, this wasn’t the ranchers’ problem, it was everybody’s problem, and it would take all of them to solve it. Real collaboration, coupled with mutual respect, was essential to any hope of success.
These are the kinds of high-level challenges that await community-focused school projects, particularly with something as ambitious as resource restoration. But, the other way to look at it is as a matrix of rich opportunities for engagement — educationally, socially and civically, personally, and collectively. More difficult to manage than prescribed classroom simulations and exercises with predictable outcomes? Without doubt; but the conventional education approach can’t come close to the bounty of broad discovery, personal empowerment, and real learning possible in the real-world project work of place-based education. Furthermore, just getting kids out in nature has a whole set of attendant benefits, from improvement in health and conduct to enhanced understanding of science.
Taking Action
Unquestionably, environmental issues, from energy dependence to climate change to species extinction to resource depletion, are the overarching challenges of our times. Without a healthy, productive environment, life as we know it is immanently threatened. But we can embrace these threats and use them to access our highest potential. This is the hidden gift embedded in all challenges. It is up to our schools and communities — our very society — to step up to the plate and see this clearly for the opportunity for transformation that it represents. Kids are ready to embrace environmental stewardship and to take responsibility for their watersheds, their world, if we enable and empower them meaningfully.
Since it began as a 4th grade project in 1992, STRAW has restored over 21 miles of creekside habitat, provided hands-on science and service learning to thousands of school children, provided specialized placed-based training for more than 750 teachers, helped local ranchers meet water quality standards and wildlife habitat goals, increased populations of endangered bird species, and expanded the ranged of the endangered CA freshwater shrimp. What’s more, the program has been a catalyst for co-creation, bringing heretofore antagonists into collaboration to advance shared goals for mutual benefit. The kids and their vision have truly been the peacemakers and the “glue,” cementing a renewed sense of community. In restored nature, people have found common purpose.
STRAW is a model that has pioneered a path combining educational innovation, environmental restoration, and community engagement in a synergistic mix of what’s possible. But STRAW is not so much a blueprint for project replication as it is an inspiration and call to action for others to take such steps in their own communities. It is, by nature, a journey of discovery. These challenging times call for innovation, for collaboration, and for action . . . action along a path that embodies hope. STRAW shows that this path of restoration is truly a path of transformation. It’s not an easy or even a clearly-defined path. But undertaken with commitment, intelligence, and community, it is a path that produces results, and one fully worth taking. As the adage intones, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step.”