Teaching to learn

It's possible a whole bunch of Sisters Elementary School (SES) fourth-graders may have lost out on learning about the native plants they live among if it wasn't for Sisters High School (SHS) biology teacher Rima Givot's freshmen and sophomores taking the time to teach them.

Earlier this month, 75 fourth-grade students piled out of two buses at the SHS athletic field were they were met by several students from Givot's biology class, primed and ready to take the younger students into the Trout Creek Conservation Area (TCCA) for a look-see at our native plants.

The high school students were in this program to teach - not to just spend a day out of class. As they gave out TCCA Field Journals to each student, there was no question in anyone's mind that the younger students were also there to learn.

And a few words about that field journal: It was assembled by the SHS students, and the first page tells all about how the TCCA was logged in the '50s and how it eventually came to be owned by the school district, and protected from development by a conservation easement administered by our good friends, the Deschutes Land Trust. The rest of the journal is made up of 12 blank pages the students could fill with notes, drawings and plant specimens - and fill them they did!

The students broke up in small groups and melded together like whipped cream on apple pie. The business-like attitude of the high school teachers was matched by the wanting-to-learn attitude of the fourth-graders.

Will Stabe, SHS sophomore, guided his group into the forest and opened the discussion of our native ponderosa pine with, "Step up and get a whiff of this massive beast of a tree; it smells like vanilla ice cream." And immediately, his small group of fourth-graders followed his lead and found that, indeed, ponderosa pine trees DO smell like vanilla.

The young students learned how to identify antelope bitter brush - and the plant's scientific name, Purshia tridentata - and found out about the role of the plant in the lives of our native wildlife, especially mule deer.

Sagebrush galls - when even noticed by adults and children - are a mystery, but not to SHS sophomore Sam Garbrecht. When one of the fourth-graders asked Sam about the galls, he answered almost immediately, "Oh, those are caused by an insect laying its egg in the sagebrush stem, after which the plant grows around the injury. If you open it up you'll find a larva inside."

As the children were leaving the forest for a small exercise break in the athletic field, SES teacher Clay Warburton asked one of his students what was sticking out of her field journal.

"Oh," said 10-year-old Lizzie McCrystal, "that's a dried stem from the rare Peck's penstemon, and I learned it only grows in Oregon."

Volunteer Martha Lussenhop was along to help, and as sophomore Sam Tara was teaching the younger students how to measure trees, Martha added her knowledge of math to help the students in measuring tree height, and to measure the monetary value of trees for lumber.

Sophomore Maddie Abbajay reflected on her day with the students: "I feel the kids really learned something. Sure it was hard to teach them because they didn't know all of the plants' names and how to do a transect - but they do now."

When asked about her students' involvement, teacher Rima Givot said, "I love the community involvement - parents coming with the fourth-grade students, volunteers helping my students. But most of all, the interaction of high school students teaching fourth-graders about their local environment, and how to care for it - a month ago they had no idea what it would be like to do what they accomplished today."