Push to improve K-12 education takes root in local high school's backyard

Stanford Report, February 19, 2009

Push to improve K-12 education takes root in local high school's backyard

BY CHELSEA ANNE YOUNG

L.A. Cicero

Brian Jensen, a student in the Redwood Environmental Academy of Leadership program, measured trees and plants during a trip to Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve earlier this month. Bill Gomez, a longtime docent at the preserve, worked with the students during the class.

"To the left," high school senior Jovanni Martinez called out to his principal, Marshall Burgamy, who was scrambling on all fours through a thicket of shrubs while clasping one end of a length of transect tape. The pair was attempting to lay a straight, 50-meter course for a vegetation analysis at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

Also on hands and knees in the dirt, Rodolfo Dirzo, professor of ecology at Stanford, emerged from the same patch of shrubbery, where he had been working side-by-side with three of Jovanni's classmates.

Jovanni and the other students are members of the Redwood Environmental Academy of Leadership (REAL), a Stanford-funded program that holds classes twice a week at Redwood High School—the only continuation campus in the Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City. The Jasper Ridge vegetation analysis is one portion of a special field trip that the four teens participated in that day.

Later that afternoon, the group analyzed the data in a classroom at Jasper Ridge. With the help of a Redwood High math teacher and two Jasper Ridge docents, the students calculated the density, frequency, dominance and value of importance of each species of plant they had encountered.

"They're really learning the concepts of ecology," said Dirzo, one of the program's founders, "but by doing activities, by doing the work of scientists themselves."

"Learning by doing is key when you have students that have really never had a successful scientific experience or class," added Cindy Wilber, the education coordinator at Jasper Ridge and REAL's other founder.

Many of the approximately 30 students involved in the program have visited the preserve, just west of campus. But most of the curriculum focuses on ecology-related activities that the students conduct back at Redwood High.

The REAL program, now nearing the end of its first year, is funded by a grant from the Stanford Initiative on Improving K-12 Education, one of the multidisciplinary initiatives sponsored by the university's $4.3 billion fundraising campaign, "The Stanford Challenge." Dirzo and Wilber co-wrote a grant proposal, and theirs was one of eight pilot projects accepted for the K-12 initiative's first round of funding for the 2008-09 year.

"I am humbled that they [Dirzo and Wilber] have taken invaluable time out of their many important responsibilities to plan, implement and collaborate for countless hours on this small high school program for underserved kids," Burgamy said. About 70 percent of the students are Latino, 40 percent are English-language learners and 70 percent are from low-income households, according to Burgamy.

Daily schedule

REAL takes place on a plot of land behind Redwood High that is about as big as a football field. To get there, participants cross a bridge over Cordilleras Creek, which runs adjacent to the school and represents the heart of the program. "The students are in the creek completing water flow analysis, pH tests and gathering specimens for data collection," Burgamy said.

The teens study how the creek fits into the ecosystem in a broader context, how development has changed the creek ecosystem over the years and what the students' responsibilities are as environmental stewards of the creek.

"You guys own this whole portion of this bigger watershed," Raynelle Rino, REAL's program manager, told the students at the beginning of the year.

A garden, currently dominated by weeds, occupies a large portion of the land. Classes take place on a small patio or in an adjacent shed that serves as the students' laboratory. Nearby is a small greenhouse.

The curriculum is organized into three-week modules that focus on topics such as species interaction or ecosystem services. Dirzo lectures on species interactions—the ecological relationships of plants and animals. Specifically, he covers how these interactions determine plant fitness and influence evolution. Students then come up with their own examples of species interactions with which they are familiar.

REAL addresses the problem that regular classes "are not innovative in the sense of moving beyond the typical, traditional way of being in front of a board and spitting facts for the kids to learn and memorize," Dirzo said.

The roughly 250 students enrolled in Redwood High attend classes either in the morning or afternoon. Students must be recommended by their teachers in order to participate in REAL. About 15 students participate per day, although the number varies because students can graduate whenever they have accumulated enough credits.

Burgamy likes to open each session by reading a poem and encouraging the students to say what they are thankful for that day. Then a brief lecture is given, either by Rino, a teacher from Redwood High, or a student volunteer or faculty member from Stanford.

Finally, REAL's students engage in an activity related to the day's topic. For example, during the session on ecosystem services, Redwood High history teacher Maureen Svenson asked the students to study old maps of Redwood City to see how development had changed the land. Then, the students—pretending to be landscape designers themselves—walked the land and created development plans that they would later present to their classmates.

"This … has really made me look at the curriculum and come up with things that are much more interdisciplinary than I [otherwise] would have," Svenson said. "It's been a really creative exercise for me."

In addition to the various activities swirling around the creek, another ongoing project was inspired by a history lesson about World War II victory gardens, which civilians planted with the intention of easing the burden on America's food supply.

"We're planting edibles from the 1940s, like potatoes, tomatoes, stuff that they ate in the 1940s during the war," student Eric Hagler said.

"And we're going to start growing mini-plants in the greenhouse," added his classmate, Brian Jensen.

For extracurricular activities such as these, students can earn history or elective credits toward graduation.

Collaborations

Dirzo stressed that being a part of the Stanford K-12 initiative's grant program has been instrumental in fostering interdisciplinary collaborations.

Occasionally, the grant winners get together to report on the progress of the eight pilot projects. "People get excited about what we're doing, and we get excited about what others are doing." Dirzo said.

For example, fellow grant-winner Professor Rega Wood and graduate student Eva St. Claire, both in the Classics Department, helped design a lesson plan about the use of Latin in scientific vocabulary, in order to help REAL students understand the words they encounter in class.

Thanks to another collaboration with grant-winner Professor Roy Pea in the School of Education, REAL will soon be international. Via the Internet, Skype calls and YouTube videos, Redwood High students will correspond and share data with students in Sweden and with participants of similar restoration projects that Dirzo and Wilber lead in Mexico.

"This will connect students doing ecology across the globe, from Redwood City and Yucatan to the state of Veracruz and Sweden," Wilber said.

Another collaboration, independent of the K-12 Initiative, was with Alan Launer, Stanford's campus biologist. An expert in conservation biology and environmental planning, Launer helped the students dig a pond behind the school so that, in the spring, they will be able to compare the creek's ecosystem to that of the pond.

Stanford graduate and undergraduate students have gotten involved as well, serving as guest lecturers and mentors. "It's really amazing to see how much [the students] really love what they're studying," said senior Jennifer Panlilio, who is completing her co-term in anthropology.

Project-Based Education

Its unique, outdoor classroom may be what makes REAL so popular with its students.

"It's fun," said student Sergio Guero. "Instead of being at class all the day, you [can] come over here and be outside working with nature."

"They have a lot of fun out here because they're sort of just hanging out," Rino said. "But at the same time, they get a lot of science content."

Patrick Gemma, superintendent of the high school district, has visited REAL and seen the program in action. He agreed that hands-on activities can bring classroom subject matter to life. "It's a way to connect the students with why they are learning algebra and why they are learning better forms of writing, and what's the value in reading and what's the value in being able to give a presentation," Gemma said.

Other schools in the district offer project-based education programs, but Redwood High does it on the largest scale, according to Gemma. "Connecting the math and the history with a theme, creek study and other environmental kinds of themes, just really engages kids and makes the education more relevant," he said.

Wilber said that project-based education programs can change a student's attitude about learning—and, in this case, make science education more attractive and rewarding for students and teachers. "It's all just rolled into this three-hour experience," Wilber said. "It doesn't feel like, 'Oh, this is my math homework.'"

Svenson, the history teacher at Redwood High who normally holds classes indoors, notices an improvement in behavior and engagement while teaching outdoors for REAL. "At certain age levels," Svenson said, "you just need to get up and move around and do stuff, and that's what this really allows them to do."

Across the board, the students agreed that being outside provides a welcome break from traditional classroom learning. "You're looking at the trees, the birds," Sergio said. "Time goes fast out here."

Chelsea Anne Young is a science-writing intern at the Stanford News Service.