By Eben Harrell
November 9, 2004


Aspen schools produce students who perform well academically and on state tests, but how can district officials ensure those students grow into competent adults and involved citizens?

That's the question the Aspen School District board will consider this month as it meets with teachers to discuss how to teach "life skills and citizenship" to students.

Aspen students are required by state law each year to take standardized tests to assess academic achievement. But while these tests provide concrete feedback, it's much harder to assess students' grasp of life skills and citizenship, according to board member Fred Peirce.

"I'm interested to see where [the teachers] see this in their curriculum," Peirce said. "We need to come up with mechanisms to assess these [goals]."

"If we are going to say we want kids to be good citizens, what does that look like?" board member Laura Kornasiewicz asked.

Life skills and citizenship are two of four "ends" policies laid out by the board to guide teachers. The other two are the board's mission statement and academic achievement.

Each year, Aspen schools coordinate experiential education programs for students. These programs, such as week-long outdoor education trips for high school students, are designed to instill life skills and nonacademic learning.

Later this month and into December, the board will sit in on faculty meetings at the district's various schools to discuss the experiential education programs, as well as how to teach life skills in the classroom. Later in the school year, the board will meet with Aspen alumni to gain further input on the issue.

"We are using these forums to link us with the staff. That's always been the idea, to increase communication," Peirce said.

Source: Aspen Times

Without making outdoor education a statutory part of every child?s schooling, the government risks undermining its ability to tackle important environmental issues such as climate change, the British Ecological Society has warned.

Reacting to yesterday?s adjournment debate on schools and fieldwork in the House of Commons, Debbie Smith, the BES education officer said: ?Outdoor classroom education allows students to connect abstract scientific ideas with ?hands on? experiences. Biological fieldwork may provide the only opportunity for students to observe living animals and plants in their natural habitat and promote a deeper understanding of the investigatory approaches that underpin the whole of science.?

?The ability to address important environmental issues, such as the impact of climate change, will be undermined in the future if there is not a strong skills base in certain areas such as ecology and taxonomy. This will in turn have a significant impact on our ability to understand and manage changes to biodiversity and other natural resources in the future. The BES believes outdoor education is so important that the government must make sure that it is a part of every child?s education by making it a minimum statutory entitlement,? Smith added.

In its response to the House of Commons education and skills committee?s current inquiry into education outside the classroom, the BES recommends that, as well as making biological fieldwork a requirement rather than an option in the Biology curriculum at all key stages, government funding for fieldwork should be ring-fenced. Support for teachers also needs to be improved.

According to Smith: ?There is now a critical shortage of biology teachers with the academic and professional skills to support planning and organising fieldwork in both schools and universities. Teachers, including trainees, need much more support in developing the skills, confidence and commitment to deliver out-of-classroom activities. There are presently no clear recommendations for outdoor teaching experience of biology fieldwork within the national curriculum for teacher training in science. Therefore, a minimum entitlement for every trainee teacher specialising in science to have experience in leading a fieldwork activity is needed to rectify this deficiency.?

A report published by the BES and the Field Studies Council in 2002 presented strong evidence of the decline in biology fieldwork in schools. Commenting on the report, Teaching biology outside the classroom: Is it heading for extinction? Professor Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society said: ?Our young people are being let down if their science education does not include a field experience. . . I urge the stark message of this report to be taken very seriously."

More information: www.britishecologicalsociety.org

By LAURA RASKIN,
Staff Writer

BENNINGTON, VT -- Mount Anthony middle school officials are ready to hand the education committee a benchmark plan for integrating all curriculum at the new middle school with the 110 acres of land that surrounds it.

The plan, which took over two years of research and is based on state education standards, calls for developing a way to link learning with the natural resources of the school's land. If approved, every academic program would have an eco-component, which means even math teachers would use the environment as a teaching tool.

The Mount Anthony Union Middle School Land Utilization Committee will present its outdoor education program to the Mount Anthony Union Education Committee on Tuesday.

"Kids in Vermont ought to be coming out to nature more, but they're not," said Marshall T. Case, a committee member. "The Green Mountains are right outside the windows of the school."

At Thursday's meeting, Case said there will be a mile of walking trails on school grounds, with listening stations where students can tune into chirping birds and the babbling of nearby Furnace Brook.

The school has a federal bird-banding license, which will allow students and staff to monitor birds through tags. Students will team with a university in southern Ecuador that has recorded 1,600 species of birds, said Case. Some of the birds from Vermont, Maine and Canada spend the winter in Ecuador.

Case has identified about 100 birds, 30 mammals, 10 reptiles and 10 amphibians that call the Mount Anthony middle school property home, animals students will be able to observe and learn about.

A Web site about the students' curriculum and tie-ins with the land will also be developed, said Case. It will include ideas for career opportunities such as farming, fish hatcheries and waste management.

Case said the emphasis on those careers would educate the next generation on "how to sustain Vermont so that it will last a long time."

The Catamount Rotary Club, of which Case is a member, has made the middle school their community project in conjunction with celebrating their 100th anniversary this summer.

The club has donated 32 orienteering kits - enough for a whole classroom - to the school. The kits include a backpack, field guides, flashcards, binoculars, journals, compasses, and hand lenses for students to use.

The total cost of the outdoor education project will not be very high because of grants and donations like the Rotary's, said Kenneth Swierad, committee chairman, who declined to state the projected final number.

A grant from the Vermont School Board Insurance Trust for $500 was matched by the school to buy about a dozen snowshoes for students to use.

As members of the committee gathered around a site plan of the middle school property Thursday, they designated each natural area with a number, one through 14. The committee is proposing uses for each area, as well as curriculum budget considerations, maintenance considerations, and access and safety concerns. Committee members will present the education committee with these 14 assessments.

One section on the site plan, labeled number three and called Hedge Row Road, exists on the southeastern part of the property.

Here, students will learn about forestry and eventually build a stone wall, said Dick Lutz, a committee member.

Committee members are also hoping to save what they may be calling the "patriot tree" - a 150-year old maple that is six feet in diameter.

"It was always our hope that (the patriot tree) would be a major feature (of the land)," said David Adams, Mount Anthony middle school principal.

Benches and a listening station may be centered around the tree.

Of the several fields on the property, committee members are proposing "perma-cultures" of nuts, berries and apples grown organically for students to learn about agriculture.

The fields will also be used for outdoor laboratories.

"I think it is a fantastic plan," said David Adams, "especially because of potential partnerships with community agencies."

On Tuesday, the Land Utilization Committee will make a motion for the Education Committee to accept their plan, and then they will make a presentation to the full select board, said Adams.

"What's key is for the select board to make policies about how the land will be used and accessed," said Adams.

Community members and neighbors will also have use of the land and trails, said Adams, but the select board will have to decide when the property is open to the public.

"I think we can anticipate people in this neighborhood using it as a resource," said Adams.

A stunted, bonsai-like bush found in Temagami this summer is a 500-year-old white cedar tree.

The scraggily ancient tree was found by scientists during a biodiversity study of islands on Lake Temagami. It was found on the shore of an island in the Hub of the lake by ecologists with Ancient Forest Exploration and Research (AFER).

This is the oldest tree ever found in Temagami, and possibly in northern Ontario. It is likely quite older, but counting stopped at 498 because the inner rings had rotted. There are several centuries-old eastern white cedars around it.

"I realized that these old cedars were out there a few years ago when I collected some driftwood for my campfire, and noticed how tight the annual growth rings were," says Michael Henry of AFER. "I counted one small piece of cedar that was less than three centimetres in diameter and found that it was over 100 years old."

Cedars are unusually rot resistant. "Cedars can practically live forever unless something kills them," says Henry. "So any cedar on an exposed rocky site has probably escaped fire and may be quite old." These are not cedars that we have saved by fighting forest fires, but rather they grow where fires seldom, if ever, burn.

"We weren't looking for them in places where they are likely to be, but found them incidentally through the island study," says Henry. "There are bound to be many many more in Temagami."

One of the greatest risks to the cedars is from campers cutting firewood. They often appear dead or have many dead branches. The public is asked to help protect them by leaving stunted cedars and any cedars on exposed rocky sites ? cliffs, scree slopes, rocky islands, shorelines, rocky glades.

Cedars with very asymmetrical, "not-round", trunks are very likely to be old. Usually cedars grow this way because part of the tree has died, so it starts to grow on only one side of the trunk. The trunk becomes very oval, or ridged, or generally strange looking as a result. This asymmetrical growth often happens very slowly, gaining a few centimeters diameter in a century.

Size doesn't mean much ? a little stick coming out of a crack in a cliff could be a century or two old.

AFER is a Powassan-based research institute that specializes in ancient forest ecosystems. This summer it undertook the Temagami Islands Biodiversity Study on Lake Temagami. The report is expected this fall.