Article on CMS Habitat: Monterey County Herald June 6, 2005

Monterey County Herald June 6, 2005 Monday SECTION: Z_TOP_STORY LENGTH: 1289 words

HEADLINE: GARDEN OF (FUN) LEARNING; Carmel Middle School celebrates its outdoor classroom

BYLINE: By KAREN RAVN; Herald Staff Writer

The subject was earthworms. And Tanja Roos started out with some fun facts how they have five hearts and zero lungs. Then she described the intriguing ins and outs of what worms do to make soil healthy for plants. Mitchell Kapoor, 10, quickly digested this information, then observed, to the delight of his peers, "The world is their toilet." Clearly, Roos, garden director at the Hilton Bialek Biological Sciences Habitat at Carmel Middle School, knew how to connect with fifth-graders. But then, making connections is what the habitat is all about. "We want kids to be aware of the world," said project manager Ellen Fondiler, "and how what they do in it matters."

Last Tuesday, 80 graduating fifth graders from Carmel River School were visiting the habitat to learn what they'll do in that special part of their world when they're middle schoolers. "Next year, once a week!" said Will Glover, 11. "That'll be cool." They tried out the binoculars they'll use to identify birds and the very cool (yet very hot) pizza oven they'll use to cook food they'll raise in the organic garden. And they planted manzanita bushes and sunflower seeds that will grow all summer and be waiting for them in the fall. They put down some roots and made some connections.

The habitat site used to be a Christmas tree farm. When she was a kid, Roos said, her family went there to buy their trees. But back in 1995, when the Carmel Unified School District first approved the habitat concept, the farm was gone, and there were 10 acres with nothing much on them, said director Craig Hohenberger. "No native grasses, hardly any shrubs and trees." And no water sources either.

What a difference several thousand days make. Now there's a waterfall and a pond, a greenhouse and organic garden, an amphitheater and bird-banding lab, and acres of native plants and trees.

Teaching in this "outdoor laboratory" has some big advantages over teaching from a book, said middle school science teacher Pat Stadille. "Now I've got really great props." For instance, eagles and hawks, bobcats and blue-bellied lizards, lesser goldfinches and a rose-breasted grosbeak ("a bell-ringer bird"), plus some snakes and "really cool spiders." The real McCoys, not just pictures.

But this isn't only a science program, Hohenberger emphasized. "We're looking for interdisciplinary tie-ins," said Fondiler. Traditional education has always been very compartmentalized, Roos said. That means teaching math in math class and history in history class and never letting the twain do any meeting. Not so at the habitat. Take the "River of Words" poetry contest that students from all over the world enter every year. "Kids come out here," Fondiler said, "and they're inspired to write about... the trees, rivers, animals where they are living."

Or take Suzanne Marden's French classes. Last fall they planted red and yellow onions in the habitat gardens. They kept them weeded. They thinned them out to give them plenty of growing room. And in April, they harvested a bumper crop, made a big pot of French onion soup and served it with bread and salade vinaigrette as a typical French meal. And every step of the way -- the planting, the tending, the harvesting, the preparing, the eating -- the students were parlez-ing en Francais. "They had to talk to each other," Marden said. "And not in English."

In another project, her eighth-graders chose French Impressionist painters to study. They learned about their techniques and styles. And then they went to the habitat and painted something -- the pond, a flower, the view from the amphitheater -- the way they thought their painter would have done it. "I think they felt like Impressionists," Marden said. They talked like them, too, of course.

So the habitat isn't just for science students. And it isn't just for Carmel students either. Through its community education program, the habitat works with the Boys and Girls Club of Monterey County and Recruitment in Science and Education at CSU-Monterey Bay to offer classes for kids from Seaside, Salinas and Monterey. "Our kids are socioeconomically challenged youth," said Ryan Smith, science specialist for the Boys and Girls Club.

On their habitat field trips, they get to do things they probably wouldn't do otherwise, such as picking fresh vegetables and cooking them in soup. Or blending them in apple-carrot-beet smoothies. "At first they said, 'That's a little weird,''' Smith recalled. "But they ended up loving it." When the kids come back from their twice-a-month excursions, he said, ''They always ask, 'Hey, when's the next trip?''' Not only that, but now the kids have been inspired to start their own garden at the club's center in Salinas.

The habitat can inspire teachers as much as kids. It offers them an opportunity "to teach what they traditionally teach in a different kind of way," Fondiler said. "It injects new life into their classes... But it's true there can be a steep learning curve in the beginning." Stadille said he's had to develop a whole new set of materials. And from time to time he's seen his lesson plans rained out.

On the other hand, he's also seen his drama class give a magical performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" under the stars in the amphitheater. In fact, teachers generally get to see their classes in a different light when they come to the habitat. And vice versa. "They're down there digging along with their students," Roos said. "And the students see their teachers with mud on their hands. It changes the whole dynamic between them."

Kids who haven't been successful with traditional teaching often do well at the habitat, Fondiler said. Besides that, children who hate their veggies can turn into greens-eating machines. "In the beginning they'll say, 'Oh, gross, broccoli! I don't want to eat it,' '' Roos said. But once they try it, they just might come back for seconds. Call it a rule of green thumb: "If they grow something themselves," she said, "they're more likely to eat it." On Tuesday, the visiting fifth-graders were eagerly devouring vegetables they hadn't grown themselves, perhaps because they came on pizzas they had made themselves. "It's pretty good," Dakota Harris, 11, declared as she sampled her first slice, but not her last. "The vegetables are the best."

That is not to say that nobody had any qualms during the visit. "We have to drink out of a hose?" asked Scarlett Tanous, 11, before she spotted the (recyclable) paper cups. And Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, 11, wasn't thrilled about scooping up handfuls of compost to use in planting her sunflower seed. She liked the idea that by fall the compost would help the seed grow into a plant taller than she is. But she was a little wigged out by a superstition she 'd heard about earwigs. "I just don't like this one kind of bug that goes into your ears," she explained.

Everyone who works at the habitat likes the hands-on education that goes on there. "We share a passion," Fondiler said. "It's infectious," Roos added. And this Tuesday, the passion already seemed to be spreading to the kids. Consider Blake Foster, 11. He had a wheelbarrow full of rich, beautiful, screened compost ready to take to the garden when another boy very nearly made a dreadful mistake. He started to dump in a shovelful of unscreened stuff. "Dude, don't!" Blake called, in genuine alarm. "You want to mess up our whole project?" The other boy stopped mid-dump. Messing up the project was the last thing anybody wanted.

kravn@montereyherald.com

To check on the activities and programs at the Hilton Bialek Biological Sciences Habitat go to: www.carmelmiddle.org Karen Ravn can be reached at 646-4358 or