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Excellence in Sacramento Schools
| Article
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14417 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1988 |
2,293 Words |
| Author
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Kathleen Prentice
Kathleen Prentice is a free-lance writer whose articles appear
in the Detroit Free Press. |
Ridged by the Sierra Nevada on the east and bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the west, Sacramento's public school district has a twenty-year tradition of environmental education from kindergarten through high school. Sacramento teachers have learned to use nature as a medium to explore mathematical concepts, language, and fine arts as well as science.
In one school, a class of third and fourth-graders wade knee-deep into a pond of winter mud under a gray sky and carefully tug tule plants out by their roots. Their harvest is passed, hand-over-hand, to classmates waiting with wheelbarrows. Stopping to check out the root systems, the kids rinse their muddy hands in the pond water and remind each other not to disturb the cattails and other neighboring vegetation.
At a science camp operated by the Sacramento County Office of Education in the Sierra Nevada, a group of sixth-graders link arms to form a silent parade headed into the night woods. Gradually, as their eyes adjust to the darkness, their teacher points out Orion and the Big Dipper. By the end of their week in the woods, the classmates are comfortable enough to walk in starlight unaided by flashlights.
Back in downtown Sacramento, a fifteen-year-old high-school volunteer job--taking care of foxes, raccoons, opossums, ferrets, and snakes at the Sacramento Science Center. She is trained to take injured animals home and rehabilitate them until they can be returned to their natural habitat.
Harvesting California native grasses, hiking in the high Sierras, wading over rocks at low tide, learning how to hold an owl, and what a king snake eats for lunch are part of the 391 Sacramento-area public school science classes. These activities are designed to offer the students an environmental education that relates to their own corner of the world. A ring of students protecting a lizard as it moves through a schoolyard, the students' projects--the gardens they cultivate in the schoolyards, the bird feeders and laboratory experiments--reflect their resultant empathy with and appreciation of the natural world.
A twenty-year history
Over the past two decades, Sacramento has developed handbooks and files filled with classroom projects. Residential outdoor camps and Science Center presentations have been established. The school system's commitment to their programs is facilitated by staff working
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