THE USE OF ECOLOGY EDUCATION IN SERVING AT-RISK YOUTH:

A CASE STUDY AT THE ON-TRACK ACADEMY, SPOKANE, WA

By

ERIK BRYNESTAD

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Washington State University

School of Earth and Environmental Sciences

DECEMBER 2010

ii

To the faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the Committee appointed to examine the thesis of ERIK BRYNESTAD

find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

_______________________________

Cailin H. Orr, Ph.D., Chair

_______________________________

Pauline Sameshima, Ph.D.

_______________________________

Rodney D. Sayler, Ph.D.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This project and report would not have been possible without the support and open-

mindedness of Fred Schrumpf, Lisa Mattson-Coleman, Chris Burke and the rest of the On-Track

staff (and students), as well as WSU committee members Cailin Orr, Pauline Sameshima, and

Rod Sayler.

iv

THE USE OF ECOLOGY EDUCATION IN SERVING AT-RISK YOUTH:

A CASE STUDY AT THE ON-TRACK ACADEMY, SPOKANE, WA

Abstract

by Erik Brynestad M.S.

Washington State University

December 2010

Chair: Cailin H. Orr

There are elements of American culture that are excessively damaging to the

environment, as well as to populations of people, and thus must change. Furthermore,

environmental mitigation efforts are largely complicated, and arguably futile, with the

continuation of existing cultural values. Educational curricula that attempt to address the

damaging aspects of our culture are subject to a number of barriers, many of which arise from

existent problems within the public education system. For example, a continual barrier faced by

administrators and teachers is the means of incorporating tenets of ecology education such as

place-based or active learning strategies for increasing student engagement into existing

curricula, while still achieving required learning standards. Because dropout prevention

programs often offer flexibility to traditionally rigid curricula for high school students through

the use of personalized lesson plans, such programs may be well-suited to support ecology

education‘s introduction into the public school system. In this study, a high school ecology

curriculum developed to engage students and instruct them on their local environment was

carried out at the On-Track Academy in Spokane, WA, a program serving at-risk youth. The

results show that students without particular interest in environmental issues are very receptive to

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an ecology education curriculum, given that it satisfies their credits towards graduation.

Furthermore, students with prior interest in environmental issues showed increased engagement

in class. A number of instructional strategies were tested, the results of which should be of

interest to teachers, administrators, and individuals with desires for carrying out similar projects.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iii

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................ iv-v

LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................... vii

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................1

2. CASE STUDY: ON-TRACK ACADEMY, SPOKANE, WA ......................................6

3. ―TO RESTORE THE WILD IS TO RESTORE CULTURE: HOW ECOLOGY

EDUCATION CAN HELP ..........................................................................................12

4. ―SCHOOL IS BULLSHIT‖: ADDRESSING THE BARRIERS ................................15

5. THE ON-TRACK ECOLOGY CURRICULUM: INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES

AND RESULTS...........................................................................................................20

a. Field Trips ........................................................................................................21

b. Writing Assignments .......................................................................................23

c. Daily Exercises and Discussions .....................................................................24

d. Art ....................................................................................................................30

6. DISCUSSION ..............................................................................................................34

7. CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................37

WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................................38

APPENDIX ....................................................................................................................................45

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LIST OF FIGURES

1. Figure 1; Washington State Drop-Out Rates ...............................................................................9

2. Figure 2; Washington Annual Dropout Rates by Grade School Years .....................................11

1

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

"In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We

will understand only what we are taught."

~ Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet

There is a prevalent myth inside American culture, which instructs us to believe our

socioeconomic institutions will adapt to create technologies that will save us from impending

ecological crises. One problem with the myth is the assumption that the earth is not an infinitely

complex, evolving system, but something that may be ―managed‖ by humans (Orr 2004: 9).

Another problem with the myth involves the means for achieving such technologies, which

historically have been attained by mounting pressure across all involved constituents—that is, by

increasing competition. The dangers of such methods are significant when considering the

implications for a public education system, such as in the U.S. now. First, the myth compels us to

create greater competition in schools, shifting emphasis away from the collective student body,

and instead devoting priority towards only those achieving at the highest level of standards. An

example of this is the increase in number of high schools offering Advanced Placement (AP)

courses, which grew to 17,324 in 2009, up from 12,022 in 1997 (CollegeBoard, 2010). Due to

limited school budgets, such an emphasis inevitably takes resources away from addressing other

urgent problems within the system, as is revealed by the persistent rate of high school dropouts

since the 1970‘s, a trend with ―little convergence in high school graduation rates between whites

and minorities over the past 35 years‖ (Heckman, 2010).

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Furthermore, the myth increases pressure—across constituents of the educational

institution—to attain higher standards. Title I of No Child Left Behind lays accountability on the

schools that provide, or fail to provide improved standards, ensuring that all public schools

―make adequate yearly progress,‖ using ―graduation rates for public secondary students‖ as an

indicator (USDE, 2010). In order to graduate, this same legislature mandates that students pass

state-standardized tests.

Herein lay the problems: first, schools are pressured by the government to graduate

students—graduation that is contingent upon standardized testing thus forcing teachers to ‗teach

to the test.‘ High-stakes testing creates a stressful classroom environment for teachers and

students and is not conducive to learning, but rather, increases students‘ incentives for either

dropping out or pursuing their GED through alternative options (Darling-Hammond, 2007).

Second, while the legislature rewards schools that show improvements in the percentages of

students completing ―gifted and talented, advanced placement, and college preparatory courses‖

it penalizes schools that don‘t show similar improvements for ―economically disadvantaged

students, students from major racial and ethnic backgrounds, [and] students with limited English

proficiency.‖ This establishes the incentive for schools to direct low-scoring populations away,

as can be seen through the increase in numbers of district-administered alternative schools for the

1993-1994 school year compared with the 2007-2008 school year, jumping from 2,606 to

10,300, and overall revealing disproportionately high numbers of Black, Hispanic, American

Indian, low-income, learning-disabled, and behaviorally-problematic students (Natl. Center for

Educ. Stats, 2010). With jobs that pay living wages and benefits virtually inaccessible to youth

without diplomas (Christensen and Thurlow, 2004) and the likelihood of incarceration increased

for dropouts (two-thirds of state prison inmates have no high school diploma (Bloom, 2010)), the

3

competition that is required by the myth provides the means for perpetuating injustices that

‗inherently‘ characterize our educational and socioeconomic institutions.

However, how does the myth hold up environmentally? Is it rational to rely on future

technologies to solve our ecological problems? Eco-feminist Vandana Shiva claims that the use

of genetically modified (GM) crops against emerging climate threats is ―suicidal;‖ that ―the GM

system is more about companies making money from farmers than food security‖ (Goering,

2010). The same case may be argued for the advent of the ‗bottled water‘ industry: what faith

can we have in markets to develop greener technologies when current ethics allow our

fundamental common resources to commodify at the unnecessary expense of increased toxins in

the environment through the manufacture and disposal of plastic bottles (Barlow and Clark 2002:

143)? Oil companies today are allowed to deepwater drill without sufficient restoration strategies

or technologies in the case of a spill (Levy and Gopalakrishnan, 2010). Corporations, and thus

profit, are at the root of all so-called ‗development,‘ and the links between environmental

problems with socioeconomic ones are inextricable, yet, there is continued disbelief in the need

for change. However, some have claimed that rather than relying on the economy and on

established institutions to create the experts and technologies we will need in the future, it makes

more sense to seek less-impactful ways of living. Rob Hopkins, author of The Transition

Handbook: from Oil Dependency to Local Resiliency, writes of the impending peak oil and

climate change challenges, ―scenarios that assume we can somehow invent ourselves out of

trouble‖ fail to account for the ―miracle‖ needed that will eradicate social exclusion, but rather,

such scenarios increase our likelihood of a ―fracturing and disintegration, either sudden or

gradual, of society as we know it‖ (Hopkins 2008: 45). A similar statement was made by

Jonathon Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission in March of 2008:

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Fundamentally transforming the foundations of the economy is the biggest contribution

we can make towards building a sustainable future. The current economic crisis may be

painful, but it will be nothing compared with the crises we will face if we continue to

grow in a way that threatens the life-support systems on which we rely (Chin, 2008).

The perpetuation of the myth that technological fixes will become available through

market adjustments obviously increases environmental stakes, and, as touched on earlier, creates

grave problems in the fairness and quality of the education system. The latter point is especially

significant given that education is a fundamental driver of cultural change. The argument has

been made that an ecology educational curriculum, relying on place-based and active learning

strategies—in which cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic assumptions are critically

questioned and challenged—has much to offer in regards to addressing the shortcomings of the

public education system (Gruenewald, 2003). Because dropout prevention programs and other

alternative schooling options often offer flexibility in the form of student-personalized learning

plans, such programs may be a useful setting for assessing the ability of such instructional

strategies in achieving traditional standards and student engagement. Because the purpose of

such programs is to increase graduation rates, one focus may be in simplifying curriculum to

grant students the credits they lack (namely math, science, English standards, etc), while keeping

non-standardized instruction (possibly ecologically- or place-related) to a minimum. However,

merely achieving the standards required to graduate high school does not ensure that students are

receiving maximum benefits from their educations. Even teaching environmental standards as

required by the State of Washington (OSPI 2010) in satisfactory albeit non-engaging ways may

not convey the sense of responsibility or action to students that more personalized, localized, and

active learning strategies could. Rather, well-designed curricula could make a primary focus of

first engaging students with ecological issues of their own place, on embracing ―new localism‖

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as a broader social movement beyond education (Gruenewald, 2008), and second, could allow

the teachers discretion in incorporating the traditional standards into daily learning material.

With response to these circumstances, a place-based, critical ecology course was taught at

the On-Track Academy—a dropout prevention program for district high school students in

Spokane, WA. Research tested the students‘ receptiveness to, engagement in and educational

attainment from the various teaching strategies of the curriculum. In collaboration with the staff

at On-Track, credit was offered for students‘ work that was applicable to other subjects—for

example, writing assignments could be used towards English credits and exercises with biology

or chemistry concepts could be used for credit when the material overlapped with state standards.

Students who only wanted to participate in specific parts of the class (i.e. field trips) were

welcome to join, but did not receive any additional credits.

The results of the program offer significant insight into the directing of other programs

that serve at-risk youth, as well as into broader issues dealing with ecological awareness and

literacy.

6

CHAPTER TWO

CASE STUDY: ON-TRACK ACADEMY, SPOKANE, WA

The students of On-Track Academy in Spokane, WA, have all attended other high

schools in the local public school system. They are all voluntarily enrolled in the On-Track

Academy and lack sufficient credits for graduation, having left their former high schools for a

variety of voluntary or involuntary reasons. Regular attendance at On-Track is not mandatory;

much of their work may be completed at home. Credit for work is granted upon students‘

completion of assignments, and thus scheduling is more flexible than traditional classrooms. On-

Track students are mostly from low-income families (61% free and reduced lunches for 2009-

2010 school year).

On-Track students have received little knowledge of their local environment in a

scientific sense. Living mostly in urban areas their whole lives, they are unable to list more than

a few species that are native to the Inland Northwest region. If asked, the popular answer is that

they don‘t like school. If asked the point of school, the answer is to learn skills that will help

them in their futures. If further prompted regarding the kinds of skills, they will refer to those

that will get them good, "high-paying" jobs.

One reason for the lack of local environmental understanding is that there are no

definitively-labeled environmental science or ecology courses taught at On-Track. There are few

such courses that are taught in the Spokane School district; rather, environmentally-related

material is incorporated under other subject headings. Washington legislature WAC 392-410-115

states that ―in all school districts…instruction about conservation, natural resources, and the

environment shall be provided at all grade levels in an interdisciplinary manner through science,

7

the social studies, the humanities, and other appropriate areas with an emphasis on solving the

problems of human adaptation to the environment‖ (Washington State Legislature, 2010).

However, presenting environmental education in an ―interdisciplinary manner‖ (in this case

meaning integrating environmental concepts within existing disciplines, such as biology or

history, as opposed to having a distinct place for ecology education inside the curriculum)

marginalizes environmental material to primary subject material, and heightens the chances that

environmental material will not be discussed adequately during the school year (Cherif, 1992).

The only high school environmental science class that is taught in the Spokane Public Schools is

an AP course. To On-Track students, generally behind on other credits for on-time graduation or

unable to attend normal scheduled class hours, AP is not an option. Furthermore, for many On-

Track students, ecology and environmental science classes are not viewed as comparably

important as math or traditional science classes, for example, in the following regard:

environmental credits are not required in order to graduate high school. Thus, such classes are

not necessary to take for moving on and receiving higher-paying jobs.

On another note, while subjects may be ―provided‖ for in district schools, because of the

discriminations embedded in the public education system, and the manner in which subjects are

and traditionally have been taught, there may be reason to believe that ―provided instruction‖ is

not being received by many students. Simply requiring environmental standards, but teaching

material in a traditional manner, does not solve the problem of enabling low-income and

minority groups to succeed in school. Furthermore, many authors (Gruenewald, 2003; Orr 2004:

168; Wells & Zeece, 2007) have suggested that the responsibility and action required to enhance

the well-being of environments are achieved best through place-based strategies, which may not

8

be achievable if only environmental standards become requirements within traditional

instruction.

The On-Track Academy is located inside of the Skills Center in Northeast Spokane, a

building devoted to providing learning opportunities for district students interested in vocational

career paths (i.e. welding, automotive, woodworking and carpentry, computer technology,

nursing, etc). For example, the cafeteria is run by students, from cooks to cashiers, as a

simulation cafe. The On-Track program is furthermore under the Havermale High School

alternative educational umbrella. Havermale, once labeled an alternative school, now calls itself

―a choice school for ninth through 12th

graders who are looking for a smaller and more

personalized learning environment‖ (Spokane Public Schools, 2010). Havermale extended its

programs in recent years to reach out to more of the populations that were being discriminated

against by the public school system. For example, their programs now include: Medicine Wheel

Academy (a school taught by and for individuals affiliated with American Indian tribes),

Contract Based Education (a program for students unable to attend regular school schedules;

students meet with teachers twice a week, and perform 20 hours of homework per week in math

or humanities), and C-TAP (Choices Through Academic Preparation, a transition program for

students asking for a GED release). With the On-Track program located inside of the Skills

Center, students who have had limited success in the traditional school system are offered a

variety of options in carrying out their educational careers. Furthermore, the schedules at On-

Track are flexible and workloads are personalized; students may work in the classroom or at

home. They bring assignments in to be corrected and at the same time receive any needed

information for completing their comprehension of a subject. There are not specific class hours

for any subject—students all work on different subjects as they deem practical, be it history,

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math, science, etc—building upon their own time management skills, a structure similar in

theory to the Montessori Method which stresses the importance of allowing students the chance

to develop will-power through voluntary, rather than imposed conditions (Montessori 2006: 366-

67). Because of the program‘s flexible time frame, students may complete work at their own

pace, faster or slower than traditional semester blocks. On-Track also provides a continuing

relationship with its students as quite often returning or graduated students come in for help with

community college course work—be it math tutoring or assistance in registering for classes.

In essence, On-Track addresses several of the problems of the public school system that

lead to inequalities in opportunity and subsequent achievement. Poverty and ethnicity are

strongly correlated to graduation rates in Washington State as can be seen in Figure 1 below;

curriculums discriminate in a variety of ways.

Figure 1: Washington State Graduation Rates

ON-TIME GRADUATION RATE 2002-

03 2003-04

2004-05

2005-06

2006-07

2007-08

All students 65.7% 70.1% 74.3% 70.4% 72.5% 72.0% American Indian / Alaska Native (non-Hispanic)

41.8% 47.2% 54.7% 48.0% 48.9% 47.9%

Asian and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic)

71.0% 78.0% 80.2% 76.5% 79.8% 79.3%

Black/African-American (non-Hispanic)

48.3% 53.9% 60.8% 53.6% 60.6% 59.9%

White (non-Hispanic) 69.7% 73.6% 77.7% 74.1% 75.6% 75.4% Hispanic (may be of any race) 49.5% 54.0% 60.2% 57.5% 60.4% 60.4% Special Education 49.7% 52.3% 59.1% 54.3% 54.7% 54.8% Limited English 49.7% 57.8% 63.4% 55.5% 55.4% 46.6% Low Income 58.6% 62.3% 64.8% 58.0% 61.9% 59.6% Female 69.8% 73.6% 77.9% 73.9% 76.0% 75.6% Male 61.9% 66.6% 70.9% 67.1% 69.1% 68.6% Source: Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) (2010)

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Penalizing students, for instance, for incompletion of homework when condition and

availability of home environments obviously varies drastically across populations, results in an

unfair situation to many children (McDill & others, 1986). Equally unfair is the suspension of

students for tardiness or absences when family situations prevent them from coming regularly

(Bowditch, 1993). Some students have jobs, children of their own, or both, and thus traditional

schooling schedules may not work for them (D‘Amico, 1984). It has been demonstrated that

students of parents who attended college and perhaps discuss matters of academic significance at

the dinner table, for example, are more likely to do well on state and federal standardized tests of

knowledge (English, 2002). Students of parents who did not attend college, or perhaps high

school, and likewise do not attach any importance to receiving an education or pursuing post-

secondary schooling, have lower achievement rates than other students (Davis-Kean, 2005). The

size of high schools was also found to have an effect on student learning, especially for schools

that enroll students of varying socioeconomic status or with differing proportions of minorities

(Lee & Smith, 1997).

For whatever reason, groups of children, every year, seem to slip through the cracks in

the public education system, dropout, and end up in disadvantaged situations (see Figure 2). On-

Track seems to be the answer for some of these students, in that the reading, writing,

communication and math skills (as well as the diplomas) they will need for future opportunities

become possible.

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Figure 2: Washington Annual Dropout Rates by Grade School Years,

(2007–2008 and 2008–2009)

Source: OSPI (2010)

However, the mitigation of pitfalls in the public school system through the provision of

alternative options merely enables more students to participate in school, and does not

necessarily address deeper problems within the system. To identify the deeper problems, we

need to ask the question: what is education for (Orr 2004: 7)? Is it simply to equip kids with the

skills they will need to survive economically? Though public education does attempt to convey

to students some realization of their effects on the environment (OSPI 2010), wouldn‘t such

instruction first necessitate, or at least be complemented by an exploration and appreciation of

local places? Changing the public education system is an important step in addressing

environmental problems. Yet today the possibility exists that many of the students in high

schools around the country may graduate (or not) and move onto careers without ever

experiencing an ecological education that examines critically the culture they are a part of.

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CHAPTER THREE

“TO RESTORE THE WILD IS TO RESTORE CULTURE”:

HOW ECOLOGY EDUCATION CAN HELP

The public educational system, like the ecological crisis, is rooted in the socio-political

fabric of our culture. As eco-feminist Vandana Shiva aptly puts it ―nature shrinks as capital

grows‖ (Shiva 2005: 32). This short statement perfectly summarizes the connectedness between

ecological, social and cultural problems: the common pursuit of money enabled by our economic

system results in the stratification of society, and the destruction of the commons. A holistic

educational philosophy—such that ecological education may offer—has the potential to address

these connections. A brief history of its theories will attempt to explain why ecology education

has not historically been taught in public schools.

The word ecology has many connotations. To some, ‗ecology‘ first brings to mind the

word ‗ecosystem,‘ which describes the area of interaction between organisms and their common

physical environments. In this sense, as a discipline ecology relies heavily upon conventional

scientific reductionist methodologies, especially physiology, biology, evolution, genetics and

behavior, among others. But ecology also is a holistic field of study, and so its mention may

connote the interconnectedness and cyclical aspects of nature, a notion celebrated repeatedly as a

source of wonder in poetry, in eastern religions, and in art. Ecology is prevalent in Native

American tradition—that all aspects of a physical space can be considered part of the same

community, including plants, animals and landforms (Pierroti & Wildcat, 2000). It is an

encompassing study in the following sense: to most minds, there are no ‗losses‘ or ‗sinks‘ in

ecology, only transports and movements into nested, grander systems.

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In the western world, ecology education must have come about as a later development of

nature studies—education‘s attempt at appreciating the natural world—until conservation

concerns of later decades (as introduced in Aldo Leopold‘s 1949 A Sand County Almanac)

transformed the educational focus towards natural resource management (Stevenson, 2007).

Then, in the 1960s, during the Civil Rights Movement, increasing awareness of the connections

between socioeconomic institutions and threats to the environment led to the association of

environmental education and ecology in general with aspects of ethics and activism (Stevenson,

2007). In the 1960s, growing concern over population growth and environmental degradation

brought a sense of urgency to the study of ecology. Many realized the field‘s potential in aiding

the understanding of the roots of the environmental crises. Researchers began to investigate

societies around the world and throughout time—societies that have developed cultures that

demonstrate an understanding of their geographic regions, helping them to survive. The term

‗ecocide‘ was used to refer to a society whose culture was excessively damaging to it own

environment, and resulted in ecological collapse (Diamond 2005: 6). Simultaneously, it was

proposed that societies have adapted their cultures to environmental changes—that humans may

even adapt culturally as much as they do biologically (Smith & Williams 1999: 3-4) and so a

culture unable to adapt is thus prone to ecological disaster.

Among these concerns, ecology education emerged—holistic, yet grounded in the natural

sciences—in response to growing environmental and cultural concerns. Proponents of ecology

education advocate its potential to transcend barriers of traditional schooling and provide lifelong

learning skills and responsible ethics rooted in environmental and social sustainability (Orr 1992:

92-93). Thus said, the lives of students of ecology today may be enriched in the following sense:

ecological understanding gives individuals a realization of their own place and of their own

14

culture‘s interaction with the environment, in a sense, giving them something to care about,

something to improve, and something to live for. Rachel Carson, when she points out that ―those

who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strengths that will endure as life lasts‖

(Sideris & Moore 2008: 273) also realizes a responsible environmental education‘s larger

implications for peace: ―the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities

of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction" (Carson & Lear 1998: 163). Ecology

is thus related to survival of our species, but also to that of one‘s own lifetime—that is, it

encourages thinking, decision-making, and societal participation to occur on grander, holistic

levels: ecology is awareness. As Barry Commoner says, ―The first law of ecology is everything

is connected to everything else‖ (Commoner 1971: 18). Thinking ecologically helps individuals

to realize and participate in the wonders, complexities and interconnectedness of nature, and thus

is a tool for perceiving and questioning the relationship of one‘s own culture within the

environment.

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CHAPTER FOUR

“SCHOOL IS BULLSHIT”: ADDRESSING THE BARRIERS

While ecology education emerged in the 1960s as a means of addressing the

environmental crises caused by damaging aspects of our culture (e.g. consumerism), after the

1960s, environmentalism narrowed its focus and was separated from the larger countercultural

movement with which it had once been associated, the reason being upper-class environmental

issues ―ignored the problems of the urban environment in which most people lived‖ (Stevenson,

2007). The consequences of this separation are significant. Ecology and environmentalism in

general still have elitist implications, either that ―environmentalists come from privileged class

strata,‖ or that ―environmental reforms have regressive distributional impacts‖ (Bullard 2000: 9).

Furthermore, the environmental movement (and thus ecology) has been tainted by corporate

culture, which equally diminishes its effectiveness through the marketing of gimmick "green" or

else overpriced but "eco-friendly" products, which reinforce environmentalism‘s association with

elitism, or provide the ethical (though contradictory) means for sustained consumption

(Athanasiou, 1996). Media likewise diminishes environmentalism‘s scientific assumptions by

continuing to report ―partisan analyses that stress uncertainty and indecision‖ (Athanasiou,

1996). Labels associated with environmentalism rooted in the 1960s ("hippies," "treehuggers"

―activists‖, etc) have connotations to some of ignorance, naivety, and radicalism (Rome, 2003).

Thus, the public‘s skewed perception of environmentalism has surely provided one

barrier to the introduction of ecology education into public schools. Trends within the discipline

of ecology may likewise provide another. There is reason to believe that the academic world‘s

privileged understanding of ecology seems to be taking ―less seriously the work of scientists who

16

are also involved in social and educational issues‖ and instead, ―conforming…more closely with

modern reductionist and mechanistic science‖ (Cherif, 1992). If this is true, it would explain why

there seems to be a lack of ecology education research being applied that addresses problems

within the public education system, in high schools, and especially dropout prevention programs.

Other barriers to using critical ecology education for addressing problems within the

public education system result from problems already inherent within that system, however, with

each barrier, as explained below, is a potential improvement that may be made. First of all, the

approach is problematic because so many students have little faith in the education system. At-

risk students, especially, ―dislike school‖ because it is either ―boring‖ (specifically, that the

material taught in school is irrelevant or unchallenging), ―meaningless‖ (that standardized

curricula taught by the district has no apparent connection to the future life of the student), or

because ―teachers don‘t care‖ (that teachers are unwilling to help students with lessons when

help is needed (LeCompte & Dworkin 1991: 68-75)). Rather than teaching relevant lessons and

lifelong learning skills, it seems schools have succumbed to a time-pressured formula of

standards, credits, and state-mandated lesson plans. Because of this pressure, many teachers fail

to form meaningful student-teacher relationships, for reason of time scheduling in schools, or

because of cultural or familial difference, or simply because students perceive teachers are not

invested in them (Muller, 2001). Teachers try to motivate students with promises of future jobs

and opportunities, but to students, especially those at-risk, there is little economic incentive for

studying hard for classes as opposed to just passing them (Bishop, 1989). ―School is bullshit,‖

one student aptly phrased this year, in a class discussion about problems with the education

system. The remark gained approval from all other members inside the On-Track classroom.

Another student, after a bad schooling experience, admitted to disliking teachers before even

17

meeting them—simply because of their role as ―teachers.‖ Surely a shared sentiment as such

associated with the public education system would make the use of traditional education for

instilling ecology into the mainstream culture problematic from the start. Therefore, its

introduction should be of some alternative means of educating. Alternative schools and dropout

prevention programs provide such an opportunity, given that students of programs like these

have experienced the inadequacies of traditional schooling. Furthermore, it makes sense to use

outside members of the community (that are not necessarily certified teachers) to partake in the

educational process of at-risk youth. The success of an approach as this could help to restore

students‘ faith in a badly-damaged educational system.

A second barrier suggests that in increasingly technological times, there seems to be little

unity, but rather isolation, amid the youth of America. Among the factors that explain the

persistently unsettling trends in suicide, crime, drug abuse and mental disorder is a lacking

―sense of belonging and purpose…long, shared cultural heritage or a strong sense of identity‖

(Eckersley, 1993). Video games, television, and internet addictions may provide convenient

distractions, but also may lead to problems such as social isolation or failure to manage sleeping

or meal schedules, all of which could interfere with academic performance (Chou & others,

2005). Lost faith in the education system combined with trends of social isolation and

technological distraction could explain the persistently high dropout rates. However, conveying

ecology education as a social justice or countercultural movement may offer a few encouraging

opportunities in this regard. Rebellion, especially at school, is of interest to many students. Youth

are empowered by the idea of changing culture. They welcome discussions of the contradictions

they see in the world and dislike the idea that they are being taken advantage of, politically or

economically. Discussing the problems of the public education system with youth at-risk of

18

dropping out—inside the classroom—is invigorating; each student has something insightful to

offer and they are, after all, experts. The creation of such an environment where discussions of

this kind are encouraged to take place, and may be tied into larger cultural and ecological issues,

could invite some form of unity among youth, and amid youth with their teachers. It could also

provide the positive sense of belonging and purpose that seems to be missing for students, but

with which many could identify.

A final barrier, though obvious, is worth discussing. Any curriculum designed to

challenge the very culture it comes out of—as a critical pedagogy of place-based ecology surely

does—will face enormous barriers from culture itself. Culture is prevalent everywhere, and no

student walks into class a blank page. Families, media, jobs, social situations, movies, books, and

even teachers are subject to and can reinforce the culture that surrounds us. Of course, assessing

and critiquing culture is also the only means of improving it, and such use of the education

system could result in the movement towards a more ecologically-sustainable society. Any

ecological education curriculum then, aside from numerous other purposes, should attempt the

following two goals: to teach the student to objectify and think critically about culture, and

second, to prepare the student with some kind of "voice" for handling their positions.

Specifically, in addressing the first step, to understand one‘s own culture is to first step outside of

it somehow—detach oneself—such that culture may be viewed from an observer‘s perspective.

Secondly, upon examination of culture and identification of cultural aspects that are unfavorable,

one must also be prepared to face the fact that they may be holding opinions of culture that are

contrary to those of the established culture. In other words: a sane person to an insane society

must appear insane. Many concepts that are ecological in nature, whether referring to the social

associations of elitism with environmentalism, or the ethical qualms of consumerism, could lead

19

to discomfort in students, allowing them to feel unconfident in, disillusioned by, or alienated

with their positions or ethics in relation to ―everyone else.‖ Teaching the roots of social

confrontations associated with environmentalism (i.e. rural vs. urban lifestyles, anthro- vs. eco-

centric viewpoints) would help the students to better understand these situations in their own

lives. Preparing students with the confidence necessary for the enormous opposition inherent to

any cultural challenge should be of the utmost importance in an ecological education curriculum.

20

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ON-TRACK ECOLOGY CURRICULUM:

INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES AND RESULTS

Twelve of the 30 students at On-Track were selected to participate in a month-long

―Ecology‖ class based on their expressed interest in environmental issues, or on their willingness

to use environmental-related material for work towards satisfaction of credit in other subjects.

For example, writing assignments from class could be used for English credit, daily exercises

that covered biology or chemistry concepts could be used towards satisfaction of science credits,

plant identification illustrations could be used towards art credit, etc. Some students merely

wished to participate ―sometimes‖ but not receive additional credit. All work that the students

completed as well as observations of student behavior throughout the class were used to track

and determine the students‘ perceptions towards the course, towards culture, and towards the

environment. Specifically of interest was how students taking the class for different stated

purposes would respond. That is, would students with prior interest in environmental issues

display higher educational attainment from and engagement in the class than students taking the

course primarily as a means of satisfying deficient credits for graduation? Or comparably, would

students taking the course primarily for credit show increased interest in environmental issues

after the class?

For achieving desirable results from all participants, namely, an increase in

environmental and cultural educational attainment, as well as high engagement rates, a variety of

teaching strategies were employed. Aside from optional written assignments, the course

21

primarily consisted of discussion sessions, small group projects, and field trips, each of which

will be explained to greater extents below.

a) FIELD TRIPS

On-Track, because of the way the program is set up, offers a wonderful opportunity for

teaching an ecology course. The fact that On-Track continues throughout the summer offers the

opportunity to teach class outdoors, and thus incorporate ‗place-based education‘ methods with

‗critical pedagogy‘ (Gruenewald, 2003). Field trips also allow teaching to take place in a variety

of forms. Experts and guest-speakers from the community, transcending the psychological

teacher-student relationship that may inhibit learning in some cases, can be influential in

demonstrating principles that are of interest to students, though these speakers may not be

certified teachers. Such experiences are likewise useful for teachers, in reminding them that

learning occurs in all places, not only classrooms.

All of the field trips attended were designed to provide means of examining culture from

an outsider‘s perspective, and to aide students in forming their own opinions, as well as to make

meaningful connections with other members of the community. On the first field trip, an urban

wilderness area—Riverside State Park—was explored, and discussion was made on the

geological formation of the Spokane River, including the basalt rock, the abiotic factors that

shape the Spokane ecosystems and the names of the dominant plant and tree species native to the

Inland Northwest region. Many students had never been to the park before and did not reveal

prior knowledge regarding Spokane ecosystems. Students were fascinated with mushrooms, an

ant hill, different tree barks, the adaptations that Ponderosa Pine forests have made to historical

22

fire regimes, and facts about nearly everything seen. Being that the purpose of the first field trip

was to gain some kind of connection to and appreciation for the place students live through the

active learning of natural ecosystems, the experience was largely successful for nearly all

students. Student engagement was demonstrated with high participation rates and avid

questioning. Furthermore, in later lessons, this first field trip was frequently drawn upon as an

effective source of recollection for students, demonstrating its usefulness as a visceral learning

experience.

The weeks following included field trips that differed slightly in that they were designed

to provide students with connections to organizations working on environmental issues in the

Spokane area. These trips included a tour of three local restoration sites managed by the Lands

Council, an interpretive walk through the Turnbull Wildlife Refuge at Eastern Washington

University, a tour of the WasteWater Treatment Facility and Spokane Hatchery, and a day of

volunteer work at the P.E.A.C.H. (People for Environmental Action and Community Health)

organic farm. Student opinions of the latter field trips varied to a greater extent, as students with

interests in particular environmental topics found some trips unrelated to their own interests, and

thus left them unengaged; students (as well as teachers) were subject to tour routines pre-

designed by guides, leaving less flexibility for scheduling or open discussion. Still, some of the

students with less interest in environmental issues found specific latter field trips preferable to

the first, in that employment and internship information were presented by each tour guide, and

these students were encouraged with future opportunities.

This latter point is significant in that evident throughout the course was the desire of

many students to learn particular, ―hands-on‖ skills. This theme was recognized early on and

efforts were carried out to address these purposes. At one point throughout the class, a donation

23

of bicycles was made by the Spokane Police Department for use in a bicycle maintenance class

to be taught at the Skills Center. These bicycles were used by the ecology class for smaller

―neighborhood field trips.‖ For example, the bikes were used for a mapping project students

participated in to learn the use of ArcGIS software and GPS devices, and to create

environmental-related maps (i.e. community gardens of North East Spokane). After the summer

class was over, many of the bicycles were donated to students who were able to use them for

transportation. When students showed interest in small projects such as these, teachers

encouraged, rather than dissuaded students to explore and pursue possibilities, even when the

projects could not be used towards academic credit. Specifically, such exploratory activities as

field trips and projects were important in class, in that, while educational goals were difficult to

achieve on a consistent basis, students‘ overall engagement in the class certainly increased.

b) WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

The first writing assignment was introduced after the first field trip—which some

students chose to participate in for English credits. Students were asked to create a description of

the Spokane Ecosystem. Specifically, students were asked to write a 3-5 page report discussing

the abiotic and biotic characteristics of the Spokane ecosystem, as well as the anthropological

changes and their effects on ecosystem processes that have come about to the area since the

arrival of European-American settlers. The second writing assignment was a follow up to the

first paper and included writing about how each of the systems of Spokane (water, agriculture,

city planning, etc) could be improved upon. The two assignments were designed to give students

writing practice and credit, but also a better understanding, and thus appreciation for their local

24

ecosystem. No due dates were assigned because On-Track allows students to turn in work

towards English credits at anytime. Students were given resources and an outline to complete

these assignments, as well as encouragement to ask questions if they had difficulties.

Few students chose to participate in the writing assignment. Students that were taking the

ecology course without prior interest in environmental issues chose to complete traditional

writing assignments for writing credit, which they deemed as ―less work.‖ Only two students,

both of whom were taking the course with prior interest in environmental issues, completed the

writing assignment. These students stated that they wanted to complete the assignment out of

interest in learning more about the Spokane ecosystem, stated afterwards that they did indeed

learn more upon completing the assignment, and also that they would rather write similar

environmental papers for writing credit than write traditional (non-environmental) papers.

Each of the students‘ essays appear in Appendix 2.

c) DAILY EXERCISES AND DISCUSSIONS

The daily exercises (Appendix 3) were designed to introduce important topics within the

subject of environmental science, but also to allow the students time for open discussions on

culture or environmental issues. Specifically, it was hypothesized that discussions would not

only allow socially-inclined learners the chance to respond to assignment questions verbally, but

would also establish a forum setting in which all students could benefit from the opinions and

insights of each other. The goal was to create a balance with adequate consideration to the

educational material in the assignments, while still allowing students to direct discussions in

other directions and thus maintain engagement.

25

The three general topics class assignments revolved around were biodiversity, water, and

nutrient cycling. Furthermore, three additional conceptual tools were identified and reinforced as

being of exceptional use when discussing ecology of the environment. The first tool was that

systems exist everywhere--that is, any process in nature may be broken down into components in

order to grasp an easier understanding. Components, furthermore, work together to seek

equilibrium within the system they all share. The second concept was that systems all operate

under variable scales--temporal as well as spatial; examining systems under differing scales will

change the understanding of these systems. The third concept was that every system entails a

tipping point–a threshold that, when passed, results in the establishment of a new equilibrium.

All of these conceptual ideas were used to reinforce the daily assignments‘ contents.

Typically, class began when all the students had arrived, and would often be held outside.

Together, the daily assignment was read and, verbally or in writing, the questions were

answered. Generally an open discussion on culture or social issues would be initiated during this

process. An instance from class will be provided below as an example of how this would happen.

One day, while talking about stormwater mitigation, I draw a picture that looks like the

following: there is an urban area on a hill (some towers pumping smoke into the air), downhill

from the urban area is a river, and in between the two is an artificial wetland. The concept is

simple: during a rainstorm, runoff from the urban area is rushed downhill where the wetland

processes the nutrients and filters the water before it is slowly released to the river. One student

asks, what happens when the wetland overflows? I see this as an opportunity to point out the

problems inherent in relying on such mitigation efforts to solve our environmental problems. As

I had hoped, the students soon realize that the real problem is not how to deal with pollution after

it has been released into the environment, but how to keep it from being released in the first

26

place. ‗Why do we have pollution?‘ becomes our new question. This leads to a socio-economic

discussion of our capitalist system, of corporations and consumerism, of advertising, of politics

and of television--in essence, of culture. ‗What is culture?‘ we ask. We decide in class that it is

media, television, art, literature, holidays, food…just about everything we can think of. One

student points out how Christmas, a custom deeply ingrained in our cultural consciousness, is

also a day of record-breaking consumptive habits. How we bury our dead, confined in time-

resistant boxes pumped full of formaldehyde—how well this does not fit with our concept of the

returning Pacific salmon laying their eggs in the sand and dying, releasing their ocean-rich

nutrients to the river system. We discuss popular TV shows like MTV Cribs, which glorify the

luxurious homes of celebrities, and advertising commercials for Happy Meals that ‗trick‘ 5-year-

olds into thinking they want them. The conversation turns to disposable products, to our culture

of waste. Money becomes a new topic of class. ―Regardless of rich or poor,‖ a student remarks,

―the only difference is that rich can have what they want. If everyone could be rich, they would,‖

and we all agree. Money is happiness in our society because everybody wants it. Good or bad,

we decide, right or wrong, all of these things exist in our society and are part of our culture.

After we all agree that elements of our culture are damaging to the environment, I ask

them if it has always been this way, they say ―no.‖ I suggest to them that this must mean then

that culture is able to change, and they agree. A new question presents itself, a question that from

now on is to become the theme of the high school summer class: how does culture change?

Consistent themes soon began to emerge from the daily class conversations, indicative of

the students‘ learning. For example, the list of the aspects we‘d come up with previously in class

regarding how our culture can be damaging to our environment and to our society can be

summarized below.

27

1) The common pursuit of money: Instead of pursuing the necessities of life (food, water,

shelter, entertainment) we pursue money in hopes that all our needs will be satisfied through

ample funds. This leads to a society where everyone is trying to get the most money for the least

work, and leads to greed, unfair competition, and the incentive to cheat one another.

Furthermore, since money itself is valueless, and it is only when we spend it that money becomes

worth something, the tendency for hyper consumerism and rapid depletion and degradation of

resources occurs. Thus we live in excess; obesity, stress from work, are examples On-Track

students came up with of our consumerist culture.

2) Conformity: Elements of our culture tend to conform rather than diversify. Examples students

come up with include adopting a common language, social pressure at school to watch the most

popular TV show at home, standardized testing, losses in biodiversity (through industrialized

land use, choice of agricultural crops produced) and globalization. The result is a ―loss of place,‖

and reduction in diversity of cultures, languages, tribes, and land uses. Conformity in thought

from globalization reinforces these trends, makes situations more drastic and makes resistance to

change more difficult.

3) Insensitivity to scale: Our culture makes short-sighted decisions as opposed to having the

future in mind. We lack the connections between local and global trends. Such problems include

the rapid and excessive use of fossil fuels and other resources, the excessive production of

plastics, fertilizers, toxins, and waste, urban sprawl and the accelerated destruction of habitat and

reduction in biodiversity.

Sometimes discussions like these would lead to a sense of animosity, or frustration in the

group of students, who overall, were very much engaged. At points such as these, it would

28

always be crucial to redirect the group into more positive directions, less the discussions would

become pessimistic or sidetracked and students would lose interest. For example, at one point,

the students (as well as I) were feeling kind of helpless about the list (above) we‘d just made, so,

immediately after making the list, we created an alternative culture. To do this, we drew an

arrow from each of the unfavorable aspects of culture and next to them wrote a word

representing the antonym of the first word. The list then looked as follows:

1) Common pursuit of money => simplicity, thrift

2) Conformity => diversity

3) Insensitivity to scale => temporally and spatially scale sensitive

To help visualize these new ―cultural preferences,‖ the class discussed a few examples.

What would such a culture look like that valued these things? Thrift and simple living we

visualized through a quote from the Great Depression: ―Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do

without.‖ We acknowledged how different this mentality seemed to us as compared to the

mentality popular in culture today—that which we‘d seen on television, for example. We talked

about things we all could do in our lives to become more conservative with our consumption and

waste. There was a novelty in the idea of mending clothes, of saving money, of composting

scraps, of buying ‗used.‘ When we discussed a culture that valued the second quality—diversity

over conformity—we spoke of the Native American tribes that inhabited this land before settlers.

Each geographic area, at one time, had creation myths and customs unique to their area. We

talked about how neighborhoods, grocery stores, and schools all look the same now and how

unique markets and shops are always more interesting. Furthermore, we said, by not

29

overharvesting wild resources for sustenance—but rather, by keeping their lifestyles diverse—

indigenous tribes were less susceptible to ecological disaster. We used a famous quote from an

Iroquois chief to explain how indigenous peoples tried to think ―seven generations‖ ahead of the

present in their actions. This was useful in thinking about the third quality of our ―new culture‖:

scale sensitivities. The example was brought up of the LongNow project by environmentalist

Stewart Brand—a project that aims to create a massive clock tower in the desert that will

automatically adjust itself to the sun everyday but only ring once every millennia. The purpose of

the project is to attract people to the site, and get them to start thinking on larger time scales. We

discussed the importance of keeping Spokane unique, and furthermore, of keeping the

neighborhoods within Spokane unique.

Typically, students enjoyed discussions such as these inside the classroom. Participation

rates were high, with nearly every student having some kind of input per session. Often

discussions would run later than class time would allow, indicative of the students‘ engagement.

Many of them responded that they had never openly discussed issues of this kind before—inside,

or outside of class.

Each day, following these discussions, students were encouraged to write some

thoughts—in a prose, poetic, or other form—regarding the issues discussed. Students without

prior interest in environmental issues completed these assignments mostly out of desire to gain

writing credit. Specifically, when presented with an open response format (i.e. poetry, essay,

etc.) students with little interest in environmental issues responded with extensive essays,

basically summarizing the points of the class discussion. Students with prior interest in

environmental issues, however, almost entirely responded with poetic forms of writing to the

discussions. Some of the results (Appendix 1) suggest that students with prior environmental

30

interest show high engagement from these discussions, whereas students without prior interest in

environmental issues may not show engagement beyond the desire to satisfy credits, but still

show environmental educational achievement taking place.

d) ART

Art was a central theme of the course. The purpose behind its use was to assist in

conveying abstract cultural themes during the class discussions, to stimulate thinking, and to

demonstrate art‘s usefulness as a communication form with which to convey ecological

principles (Blandy & Hoffman, 1993).

For example, in the first week, the following W.B. Yeats poem was read together in

class:

It is time that I wrote my will;

I choose upstanding men

That climb the streams until

The fountain leap, and at dawn

Drop their cast at the side

Of dripping stone; I declare

They shall inherit my pride,

The pride of people that were

Bound neither to Cause nor to State,

Neither to slaves that were spat on,

Nor to the tyrants that spat…

31

With the first reading, the students had little understanding of what the poem was about.

However, upon closer inspection, they discussed the poem‘s conveyance of the respect an old

man has for fly fisherman—that is, independent people who do not succumb to 'servant' or

'tyrant' but rather choose some middle path. We spoke about what ‗middle path‘ this may be

referring to and decided that the answers were numerous. Artist, non-profit worker, teacher,

writer, fisherman—anyone who does not feel subject to participate in the established culture

could be considered to be living the ‗middle path.‘ If not referring to a job or position, the

‗middle path‘ could also mean a perspective one holds. Yeats, for instance, in writing the poem,

could have held a job as a worker—that is, as a ‗servant‘—but still his choice was to improve

upon his mind and create poems for later generations to experience. Under such interpretation,

living the ‗middle path‘ refers to the resistance to surrendering to the established culture, and to

the striving for awareness of that culture, with an effort to improve.

A class reading of the lyrics to Bob Dylan's The Times They are a Changin' is another

example that may be used to show similar conclusions. The difference, we decided in class,

between the song's era and our own is the enormous amount of unity youth movements in the

1960s seemed to have compared with what we perceive today. That the lines, 'keeping your eyes

wide' and 'heeding the call' is another reference to what we‘ve termed earlier in class: ‗living the

middle path‘—that is, thinking for yourself in a world that will sweep you up in its culture if you

allow it to.

Other uses of poems included the reading of ‗Axe Handles‘ by Gary Snyder, with which

we discussed the education system. As the course progressed, the students adopted ―We‘re

becoming axe handles‖ as a metaphor for their own educational experiences, since ―when

32

making an axe handle, the pattern is never far off‖ (Snyder 1999: 489). When prompted how

they as students would change the education system, the discussion led to frustration, obviously

indicative of their own experiences within the public education system, and one student

suggested with sarcasm they should ―start a revolution.‖ At this point another quote by Gary

Snyder gave insight into how culture may be shaped peacefully: "Since it doesn't seem practical

or even desirable to think that direct bloody force will achieve much, it would be best to consider

this a continuing ‗revolution of consciousness‘ which will be won not by guns but by seizing the

key images, myths, archetypes, eschatologies, and ecstasies so that life won't seem worth living

unless one is on the transforming energy's side" (Snyder 1999: 251). After an explanation that

‗eschatologies‘ refers to a culture‘s beliefs about the final days of the world, humanity, or life,

and that the rest of the poem refers to taking control of, essentially, the unseen elements that

dictate the manner in which people live—that is, what they live for—the students clearly felt

empowered.

In general, discussing an ecological movement and depicting it as a ‗middle path‘ for the

most part left the students engaged and comfortable with the fact that schools would not teach

them all the things that would be useful and important in their lives, and that they would need to

strive in learning many things for themselves. Furthermore, discussions of the environmental

movement, of poetry, of social justice and of youth movements left students with eagerness in

their voices at the end of each day, and upon closing discussions, they behaved with actions

towards one another of mutual respect and collectiveness.

Other uses of collective art included drawing together in groups. Sometimes, for

example, this was done to sketch illustrations of plants we had identified on a field trip. On the

last day of class, the covers of the students‘ quote books were ‗personalized‘ with individual

33

drawings. The quote book was a booklet consisting of a group collection of students‘ quotes,

writings, and poems, assembled for each student as a product of the class (equivalent to

Appendices 1 and 2, except with names attached to each work). This activity the students

especially enjoyed—having a personalized memento from the class, realizing what they had

learned during the month they had all spent together, and reading their own names after

statements conveying that everyone had had something interesting to offer each discussion.

During group drawing activities such as these, students were more open to conversation, or else

felt more comfortable to sit and listen to others without the tendency to disrupt or dismiss

themselves. In short, allowing art to become a viable medium for communication in class

lightened the tense, high-pressured structure that may have been associated with their traditional

schooling experiences.

34

CHAPTER SIX

DISCUSSION

There are two important findings from this study. The first is that, of the population of

students at-risk of dropping out of Spokane public schools, there is a proportion that is interested

in ecology and local environmental issues. However, because these students have unique past

experiences with schools and unique socioeconomic standing, they are less likely to pursue their

environmental interests through traditional academic paths (i.e. college). To ensure that such

students receive some environmental understanding before they graduate high school should be

of the utmost importance to environmental educators, as should be providing them with non-

academic environmental opportunities upon graduation of high school. Giving educational

curricula the capacity to adapt to such students‘ circumstances and finding ways to grant them

credit for work related to the environmental subject areas they are interested in necessitates a

relationship with students from teachers and staff of dropout prevention programs, as well as

flexible means through which educational standards can be achieved.

By the same token, the other important finding from this study is that some at-risk

students, who may be uninterested in ecology or environmental issues, may nonetheless be very

receptive to an ecology-based curriculum, given that it will help them to satisfy credits towards

graduation. This point should also be of interest to environmental educators as it demonstrates an

opportunity to reach a largely accessible population that has henceforth received little

environmental education. Again this finding suggests the need for flexible assessment of

standards for at-risk students, but a different approach than that for the population of students

interested in environmental issues should be sought, in that the focus should rest more heavily on

35

engaging students in environmental issues, rather than merely enabling them to achieve learning

standards and graduate.

While the ecology curriculum instructional strategies carried out at On-Track seem to be

largely successful, their abilities to be applied universally are questionable for a few reasons. For

example, field trip opportunities differ greatly from city to city, and where Spokane is unique in

that it has a largely accessible wild land area instrumental in demonstrating regional ecosystem

characteristics and defining ecological place, this is not the case for many intensely urbanized

areas. Rather, such definitions of place may be culturally-focused. Still, other field trips, in

which the point is to connect students with local organizations working towards environmental

goals, should be applicable to any region and would be beneficial for any school to include visits

to in curricula. Writing assignments and the use of environmentally-related subject matter to

satisfy traditional education standards is likewise applicable, and schools or programs interested

in incorporating environmental agendas to their curricula should strive for a close relationship

with students regarding students‘ particular interest areas. Time set aside during school for class

discussion and the incorporation of art into learning material should similarly be useful for

universal curricula. The students‘ potential is maximized when teachers and administrators

closely monitor and balance students‘ engagement as well as progress in completing graded

assignments.

On a sweeping note, there is a fine balance to be maintained between the increased levels

of stress associated with standards-emphasized curricula and loosened, albeit engaging, curricula

in which academic standards are not achieved. Especially for at-risk youth, increased pressure to

attain standards is useless unless somehow balanced with activities that are both engaging and

specific to individual students‘ particular interests. Furthermore, curricula—across all subjects—

36

should strive to make students think critically about their own schooling careers—that is, the

political and socioeconomic rationale behind mandatory education. Even then, students should

not be expected to participate with great enthusiasm in a system that is designed to perpetuate

their society‘s flaws. An ecological education curriculum offers amazing opportunities for

addressing the problems associated with public schooling, as well as the environmental and

social crises caused by our culture. Specifically, a curriculum that critiques openly rather than

disguises the shortcomings of the education system and of culture should produce more

engaging, critical learning environments. Keeping instruction holistic rather than specific, and

grading flexible albeit standardized, allows for increased and more conscious participation in

class.

Year-long curriculum of this kind would offer even more opportunities, as many students

in this study expressed explicit interest in the gaining of ―skills,‖ rather than information, and of

taking on long-term specific projects of interest. Such instruction might include wilderness and

survival workshops, gardening opportunities, public art demonstrations, or sustainable living

projects (such as building a chicken coop, greenhouse or worm bin, canning fruits and

vegetables, or learning useful crafts, such as knitting and crocheting). GIS, plant identification,

and bicycle maintenance were particular skills gained in this class that were of exceptional

interest to some students. Finding innovative ways to incorporate environmental instruction into

curricula and to achieve learning standards through engaging, student-driven projects are

explorations that should be of the highest interest for alternative educators and administrators.

37

CHAPTER SEVEN

CONCLUSION

Without a critical discourse in high schools on the environment, on culture, and on the

socioeconomic institutions that propel our education system, there is reason to believe that some

students may never experience such discussion. Allowing populations of our society to remain in

the dark on these issues is socially unjust, and heightens our chances for ecological complication.

On this note, let us remind ourselves that the purpose of schools may not be to enable that

which we have been taught to understand is success. Rather, these may be the very actions that

are the root of our problems. Returning to the words of David Orr (2004:12):

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does

desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every

kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage

willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities

have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.

Such a call suggests that academia need not, nor should not, be the only environment in

which one may receive an ecological education. Nor should the encouragement of high school

students to attend college be the goal of environmental educators. Disassociating ecology with

academia may in fact help to dispel certain barriers that inhibit environmentalism from pervading

throughout culture. Teaching students a ―middle path,‖—that is, encouraging them to question

and challenge their cultural assumptions, regardless of their future (if any) academic careers, is a

practice that can extend beyond the high school years, but also beyond the scope of classrooms.

The establishment of an effective environmental movement should acknowledge that not just

environmental scientists, but also writers, artists, builders, business-owners, mothers and fathers

will be necessary.

38

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APPENDIX

1: STUDENT WRITTEN RESPONSES TO DAILY DISCUSSIONS

i) Diversity is the driving principle behind change, and thus the entire world. Everything, be

it human or animal, plant or rock, changes in some way, be it death or erosion.

Without this change, stagnation becomes widespread. This isn‘t even a viable

outcome—a planet with a single life form. Without trees, herbivores would starve.

Without herbivores, carnivores would not survive. Without animals, the environment

would collapse due to lack of nutrients. There is a planet that is fairly close to us with

no biodiversity. It has rocks, and only rocks. Mars is a fairly inhospitable place,

mostly due to the fact that it has no diversity. Anyone who values life values

diversity, because one cannot exist without the other.

ii) I believe every ecosystem in the world has a tipping point for the reason that if something

is taken out of an ecosystem, that missing part of the food chain will affect the entire

ecosystem in one way or another.

iii) We care about biodiversity because it is what keeps cycles going. Without diversity in

our ecosystems some species of plants may die off without the help of other species

of plants. Whether it is protection or food there is a cycle and every little thing counts

and is a part of it. If everything was the same, not only would it be boring or we

would lose the beauty of the world, but it would screw up the life of some ecosystems

and eliminate life altogether in others. Some ways globalization leads to homogenous

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economic and social thinking is in the languages we use. There use to be 100‘s of

languages in the world, now we are down to a few and the rest are known as dead

languages and people are forgetting about them altogether. We also had luscious

fruits and vegetation of many kinds but now we are only reproducing a few kinds and

the rest are lost and unable to reproduce themselves again.

iv) The reason biodiversity is important is that if everything were the same, one type of

insect could come around and wipe it all out. But if we plant, say, five species, that

bug could only wipe out 1/5th

of the crop. So by keeping things diverse, we will

survive. It is a safety net.

v) Culture evolves with the products we produce. Everyone wants the latest and greatest

thing, and most people don‘t care what impact this has on the environment. Once we

get this new thing and like it we will always want what we have to be bigger and

better than what other people have. Only then do we learn what impact we have had

on the environment, but by then it is almost impossible to stop habits and culture.

vi) How does culture affect the environment? In today‘s culture we tend to be racing towards

the next best thing. We are growing to be more and more urbanized and less involved

with the outdoors. With today‘s culture people are following movie stars and music

stars. So many people started off pretending not to care anymore that now pretty

much nobody does. There‘s more pollution and vandalism, broken bottles, windows

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and graffiti all over. If I could change things I would start by getting a group of

people together and just start with a neighborhood cleanup.

vii) Culture changes as the times change. We as humans have the ability to take any little idea

and expand on it to take any little idea and expand on it to no extent. If we want

something badly enough, we will do anything within our power to obtain it. Our

culture is defined by the choices we make as a community. The point being, that our

culture has been contorted by greed, curiosity and our incognizance of what we‘re

doing to the environment. The biggest problem with this is that the people who are

most responsible just don‘t care. This ties into greed. They already have more than

most people have, but they‘re always going to want more. This is a concept that

defines our culture. It‘s the majority of people who share an idea or a goal. This

manipulates most other people into thinking that same way. And once everyone starts

thinking the same, they act on it, regardless of whether or not it‘s a custom to them.

viii) I think culture affects the community by saying what they really don‘t mean. For

example, some people watch advertisements on TV and believe it. Like what they say

about make-up: they say it‘s shiny and lasts longer but once you get it, it‘s not what

you think. So they basically lie to you so that more people will buy the product. Like

me, I always want to buy the new make-up because I think it will be better than the

one I had before, but to me, it‘s the same as the last one.

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ix) Everyone is watching more television and our country is gaining more weight. Less

people are walking—everyone is driving. I want to change everything. Less TV

shows and more walking and activities throughout schools. Everything is possible if

you try.

x) It‘s all TV,

Can you not see?

It makes everyone blind,

So get out and start

Admiring Ponderosa Pine,

B.P. screwed us over,

They tried to save a buck,

Despite saving our waters,

They don‘t give a F***,

This culture‘s not lost,

It might be it seems,

For those who try saving it,

Oceans, Rivers, and Streams

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xi) By life by dream

The world will seem

To take our thoughts

Our dreams for naught

But ‗twere the world

A pretty place

A diff‘rent guise

Its face might take

‗Twere life the same

As fantasy

Yet written in

The modern key

Our lives a path

Not set in stone

A diff‘rent route

The past would show

If moral compass

Should be our guide

Through paths of life

Our methods tried

Without our greed

Our thoughts be spoke

Clarity, kindness

Good will be wrote

If urban jungles

Seek your mind

Then spread your wings

Your thoughts must climb

Past toils, troubles

Through thoughts divine

To land in peace

As nature‘s kind.

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xii) Everywhere I look the goods change hands

The farmer trades fruit for many pots and pans.

I see no more hunger in the eyes of the poet

But a smile at every door.

We are no longer

Slaves of the stronger

Corporate minds of these times.

The fire is now lit

Keep in the pit

Of every person‘s heart

Repelling the dark.

The world has changed

So get in line for the first time

To spend the fruits of your land.

xiii) Somatically defiled

Our culture, irksome and inwrought

Mechanized solely from a somber sign

Intelligible, incoherent conceptual design

Closing the mirrors of the mind

The twin-and-same neversound

Constantly feeding my starving soul down

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xiv) At the current pace we are going, our culture will destroy the environment. But like

in the past, our culture can change for the better. Consumers might start buying

greener and earth-friendly products which would cause companies to start selling

green products. Over time, this could turn us into a earth-clean culture. The cultural

value I‘d like to see is passion because if that were the case than most everyone

would work hard to achieve their goals instead of joining in on the rat race.

xv) There are very few ways to change the apathy people have towards changing the way

they live. One way would be to show them how the choices that they make today

could affect things 10 years from now, and how this would affect their children and

their children‘s children. Only when people are threatened with the destruction of

something they love or care for will they find the need and reason for change.

xvi) Some cultural values I would like to see are the population masses understanding the

significance of diversity. Not only biodiversity, but diversity in our customs, our

market system—things like that. If people were cognizant of what we‘re doing

(namely to our natural systems) they would change and ultimately better our cities,

forests, wildlife habitats, production and our overall well-being and quality of life.

xv) As an overarching theme, I‘m afraid I must agree with Henry David Thoreau. In

order to support both ourselves and the environment, we must ―simplify, simplify,

simplify.‖

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2: STUDENT WRITING ASSIGNMENT EXAMPLES

i)

Defining the Spokane Ecosystem

Spokane, a beautiful place to be sure. But how did it come to be so naturally aesthetic? It

wasn‘t one event in particular that shaped the region‘s abiotic components: it was a great deal of

things. These include; The Columbia Plateau Flood Basalts, Cascade Range, Missoula ice dam

floods, channeled Scablands, Palouse Prairie, and Columbia River Basin, Shrub-Steppe,

Ponderosa Pine Forest, Columbia River Watershed, Fire Regimes, Beaver fur trapping, Coeur d‘

Alene mining, Hydroelectric Dams, Timber harvesting, Agriculture, and Urbanization. Let me

give you a few examples of what these occurrences are.

One of the more significant events that so drastically shaped Spokane is the Columbia

Plateau Flood Basalts. This happened when 40,000 cubic miles of basaltic lava covered parts of

Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. It was estimated to have happened approximately between 17

and 6 million years ago. There are more than 300 high-volume individual lava flows that have

been identified, along with countless small ones.

Another interesting occurrence is the carving of the Channeled Scablands. Beginning

80,000 years ago, and ending only 10,000 years ago, Canada and the northern United States were

glaciated by two large continental ice sheets. There are three lobes associated with the Channeled

Scablands. These are the Puget Lobe, Okanogan Lobe, and Purcell Lobe. The western lobe was

called the Puget Lobe and completely covered Puget Sound. The central Lobe was called the

Okanogan Lobe and blocked the Columbia River at what is currently the Grand Coulee Dam.

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The eastern lobe, called Purcell Trench Lobe, dammed the Clark Fork River several times to

form glacial Lake Missoula. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet, scaled to 1150 meters thick, covered

parts of southwestern Canada.

Approximately 12,000 years ago 500 cubic miles of water tore its way from western

Montana to the Pacific Ocean, submerging the Pacific Northwest completely in water. This is

called the Missoula ice dam flood. It has occurred many more times throughout history. It used

some 50 cubic miles of sediments and basalt to shape Eastern Washington‘s hills and the

Columbia River Gorge.

Next on the list is the Cascade Range. It is a formation of mountains in submarine

conditions. Made up of young volcanoes, lava flows, and hot springs. The ocean floor is

spreading apart and forming new ocean crust along the rift. This is because hot magma from the

earth‘s interior is ―injected‖ into the ridge and expelled from the top. In regards to the tectonic

formation, the Juan de Fuca Plate plunges underneath the North American Plate. When the plate

gets so far into the ground, it encounters intense heat and pressure, melting a portion of the

plate‘s solid rock structure. This is called ―subduction‖. Once the rock melts, the magma rises

towards earth‘s surface to erupt.

`One interesting biotic feature of Spokane is shrub-Steppe. This happens because a

coastal mountain range captures most of the moisture that moves inland, causing very little

precipitation to reach the far side of the mountain. This causes everything on the non-coastal side

of the mountain to be exceptionally dry and arid. Surprisingly, many animal and plant species

have adapted to these harsh conditions and created ecosystems. The primary historical ecological

processes at work in the Shrub-Steppe are drought and fire. Many of the plants have adapted to

the fire; they have below-ground storage organs and deep roots.

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Now, probably one of Spokane‘s most important feature, the Ponderosa Ecosystem.

Ponderosa pine trees are most renowned for their fire-resistant properties. Their branches are

shed as the trees mature. This is ultimately why most of the Ponderosa has survived for so long.

But when fire isn‘t a problem, there are many species of other trees and plants that are sustained

by the roots of the Ponderosa. Species that otherwise couldn‘t sustain themselves.

The Palouse is a region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of

southeastern Washington, north central Idaho, and northeast Oregon. It is used widely as an

agricultural hotspot, primarily producing wheat and legumes. Formed during ice ages, blown in

from the glacial outwash plains to the west and south, the plains consist of random, seemingly

picturesque hills. Virtually all of the Palouse is used agriculturally, though, it was once

dominantly inhabited by Bluebunch wheatgrass and Idaho Fescue.

The Columbia River is the largest river In the Pacific Northwest region of North

America, Rising in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and

then south into Washington, then flows west to form most of the border between Washington and

Oregon before it drains into the Pacific Ocean. It has an average flow at the mouth of about

265,000 cubic feet per second. The Grand Coulee Dam was constructed in 1902 to provide

irrigation for the surrounding 600 acres of land.

Natural systems adapted and survived for millions of years before humans antecedently

grew cognizant of ways they could manipulate the environment with pyrologic concepts.

Because of this, many ecosystems are suffering. Fire Regimes are the main cause for this,

accounting for the defilement of many shrub ecosystems. The earliest account of Fire Regimes is

that of the Native Americans. They used this technique to modify the landscape, but many

people today abuse it, further inhibiting the growth of mundane substances. In California in early

55

times, the Native Americans scorched shrub land to change the geographical features from

shrublands to grasslands to allocate favored game to the area.

The trapping and trading of Beaver pelts left an indefinite impact on the environment and

the ecosystem. People trapped Beavers almost to the point of extinction, leaving many rivers

without a dam and causing many superfluous floods. The Beaver is an absolutely necessary

component to our environment and ecosystems. The dams they construct not only seize the

control of rivers and streams, they provide habitats for many biotic species. Some of these

species are; fish, insects, and amphibians. Relevantly, it provides feeding grounds for mammals,

birds, and other insects.

Mining began in the Coeur d‘Alene River Basin in the late 1880‘s. Most of the nation‘s

silver, lead, and zinc were exhumed from the dig site and added a substantial amount to the areas

economy. The only problem with this is that all the mine waste was dumped into the river,

causing staggering contamination to the water from the surface to the ground. This can cause

such adverse health effects as brain and nervous system damage (especially in small children.),

birth defects, and chronic kidney damage. Zinc is harmful to the wildlife in the river, killing or

seriously harming anyone who eats from it.

Hydroelectricity is electricity generated by hydropower. I.e. the medium of the

gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable

energy. Once constructed, a hydroelectric complex produces no direct waste, and has a

considerably low level of CO2 output. Large reservoirs required for the operation of

hydroelectric power plants result in submersion of extensive areas upstream of the dams,

destroying biologically rich and productive lowland and riverine valley forests, marshland and

grasslands.

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Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key

development that led to the rise of human civilization. Farmers created food surpluses that

enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. This encompasses a

wide variety of specialties and techniques, including ways to expand the lands suitable for plant

raising. The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw

materials. In the 2000‘s, plants have been used to create biofuels, biopharmaceuticals, and

bioplastics. Not only that, but they account for a significant portion of what we need to eat every

day. So it‘s needless to say that agriculture, namely the plants it yields, is an antecedently

necessary part of our culture.

Timber Harvesting is the process in which certain trees are cut down either by a

lumberjack or a machine for forest management and timber. Trees are cut down and used to

supply industrial companies with timber. This is then used to manufacture and mass produce

goods. Forests produce a wide range of values and benefits, including fiber for wood and paper

products. Trees must be harvested to supply raw materials for the products required by society.

Currently, the amount of wood grown in the United States is more than double the amount

harvested. Nonetheless, proper forest management is essential to assure an adequate supply of

wood in the future. The harvesting of trees will only have long term benefits to society if the

potential for renewal of forests is successfully evaluated, implemented, and achieved. Timber

harvesting only becomes an important part of forest management when all the significant

biological, economic, and social factors are considered. Hence, the preservation and poly-

renewal of our forested ecosystems is crucial for our long term survival.

Urbanization is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. It is also

defined in the United Nations as a movement of people from rural to urban areas with population

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growth equating to urban migration. The main cause for this migration is that it permits

individuals and families alike to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and

marketplace competition. In modern times, industrialization of agriculture has negatively

affected the economy of small and middle sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural

labour market. This takes jobs away from the hard working men and women who depended and

thrived on this way of living for generations.

These are the (a)biotic components that helped shape Spokane into the uniquely aesthetic

environmental region it is today. It is increasingly difficult to comprehend what Spokane would

look like if not for these geographically procured events/biotic systems. Beautifully mastered in

its seemingly divinized architecture, it is a sight not synonymously tangible anywhere else in the

world. So next time you‘re mobbing through Spokane, take in the sights, and siphon the

undeniably structured abstract that is Spokane‘s natural beauty.

ii)

Pollutants:

A Look at Human Effects on the Environment

The improvement of an ecosystem is always a difficult prospect, and it is even more so in the

Spokane area. The main barriers to environmental progress are political, economical, and human

in nature. The main political issues involved in cleaning the Spokane area are the close borders

58

with both Idaho and Canada. The issue there is the fact that we have no real recourse when

dealing with Canada to force them to make stricter environmental regulations. With the Idaho

border, the national laws are held in common, but we have no established method to force them

to clean up the waters and wildlife in our mutual land. There is no way to cut off our water

supply from Idaho, and thus the pollutants they put into their water, such as heavy metals, so we

have to work first on the pollutants that are coming in, before we can attempt to clean what is

already there. This is easier said than done.

The first main bastion of pollutants is the waterways, such as lakes, streams, brooks, and rivers.

This is possibly the most important of all the areas of pollution, because the water source is

always the base of the environment. Either as shelter or food, or oftentimes, both, water plays an

important role in any society, be it human or otherwise. In order to clean our waterways, the first

thing one needs to realize is that distilled water would be just as bad to the environment as the

water containing heavy metals is. Certain bacteria and microscopic elements are required in the

natural environment, and though distilled water is pure, it is not naturally sound. The best thing

we can do for the water is filter the silt, that is, the soil at the bottom and sides of the river,

considering that is the most dense center of pollutants. Furthermore, we can search for a type of

bacteria that will digest the pollutants we have and make them more manageable.

Water does not only mean the conservation of lakes, rivers and streams, but also the elimination

or reduction of damages caused by water. Runoff, caused by both storm water and other sources,

reduces the amount of useable soil, and is thus a threat to both our livelihoods and our lives.

Without the system of roots we had in the times gone by, our ground is slowly being pulled from

right beneath our feet. The easiest way to remedy this is to plant species that grow quickly and

59

build a strong root system early in their development, but most species that do fit those criteria

are either not adapted to our area, or require more soil than we can provide. The best solution

that is currently viable is to begin the transition to a more permeable sidewalk material, plant

more plants in urban areas, especially on roofs, and present easier routes for the water to travel,

so that it does not flow through potentially dangerous areas.

Water is not our only concern in the environment, though it is nonetheless a large one. We must

also consider the other facets of the environment, both in how they respond to our individual

efforts, and in how they themselves may be contaminated. Specifically, in this case, our next

greatest concern is the available land space. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most limited

resources in terms of availability. We rely on the land, and the things it can produce, for even our

most basic needs. Agriculture has been the main staple of civilization since it was first

discovered, and as such, it is a huge use of land today. Wheat, rice, grain, barley, tomatoes,

cherries, onions, and the vast majority of other vegetables and fruits require huge plots of land to

grow enough for even one city's consumption. Cattle, and other animals we use for food, tend to

be grazers, and thus require even larger plots to feed them. There is no solution in sight to this, as

growing food has always been a difficult thing to do, but the land faces even more issues, such as

erosion. Tilling the fields rips up the roots that keep the soil from being blown away by the wind

or washed away by the rain. The alternative, no till farming, presents a difficulty in the fact that

it has no means of returning the nutrients the plants use into the soil, as tilling is the main reason

that it doesn't take years for plant byproducts to become more fertile soil. The only possible

solutions to this, such as allowing the plants to die on their own and only farming a specific plot

once in a cycle, probably five years, are not economically viable.

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Furthermore, agriculture has shown us the issues behind chemical fertilizer and pesticides. The

possible harm to not only humanity, but to the other animals, such as bald eagles and their eggs,

is huge, and there is no cheaper easier solution. The main issue is that farmers are not paid

enough to justify using environmentally safe products and procedures, and thus they truly can't

afford to. The only way to fix this would be to pay more for organic products, or find a cheaper,

easier alternative to chemical pesticides.

The diversification of crops is not an economically viable option, considering that seeds are

bought in bulk, and it would be impossible to regulate water and sun consumption on a plant to

plant basis. The high demand crops are diverse, and though a few could probably share plots, it is

much more likely that this facet of agriculture will remain the same.

One of the most important issues in the field of agriculture is the transportation of the crops,

which will cost large sums of money and burn vast amounts of gasoline in an attempt to fill fleets

of trucks and trains with the edible components of our ecosystems. Although no alternative

systems are viable today, I look to the future and hope to see a system of magnetic railways that

connect cities to farms.

Forests have long been a source of food, income, and entertainment. Fire regimes, the controlled

burning of a piece of woodland, are both useful and important, but they are also potentially

dangerous. In our era, the refuse from logging attempts and the thick undergrowth cause fire

regimes to be a huge hazard, though still somewhat of a necessary evil.

Reduction of timber use is inevitable. We cannot use as much wood as we used to. It is not a

possibility, because trees simply do not grow as fast as we have been cutting them. This

61

necessitates the finding of another medium on which we can write, or at least a reduction of

written language.

Cities are the future, mostly because it is only by making things in bulk and trading that culture,

science, medicine, and leisure time are possible. However, in another way, cities are an urban

blight on an otherwise beautiful landscape. Smart growth is the principle of expansionism that

calls for centralized and independent communities that are as compact as feasible. However,

from an economic standpoint, this is both unlikely and unwise. Bulk shipping is simply cheaper,

resulting in cheaper food. In a small commune, that much food is unused. This is not simply a

problem from a shipping standpoint. In every community in the history of man, something has

had to be traded for. We simply cannot find a place that has every resource we could ever want,

and still some room for modular housing. Biodiversity within the cities is more viable,

considering we are already beginning to make the shift. Roof gardens are both beautiful and

economically advantageous, and so, I would not be surprised to see them becoming the fad in the

next few years. Parks and nature reserves are being preserved in the midst of the urban blight,

and if the world's sentiments remain constant, they should soon begin to spread.

Energy has always been a concern, and when considered on the level of the individual, is

actually a ridiculously easy problem to overcome. It is when we come together that the simple

overuse of energy due to issues like laziness and inconvenience become a problem. The only end

to this would be to change the human nature, fixing bystander apathy itself, and if someone

manages to manufacture something like that on a massive scale, they would be the king of the

world in days. No, literally, they would be able to change the nature of the rest of humanity to be

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submissive and easily controlled, then they would be a few simple speeches away from world

domination.

Alternative fuel is to scientists as the Holy Grail is to the religious orders of the Catholic church.

Regardless, the search will be over when I find the secret to cold fusion.

Education is possibly the most important part of our lives, that is, the part we spend above the

ground. Education cannot be 'fixed' nor can it be quantified. We continue to learn all our lives,

and so we cannot say that we have found the perfect method nor the worst method of education,

simply because we are not done yet. School on the other hand, suffers from the same issues as

and other bureaucratic office, under funding, over-management, and a complexity derived by the

oversimplification of the individual parts. Considering that I only have a maximum limit of five

pages, nothing I can say would change your own opinions on the educational format, and thus

you will simply have to wait for my book.

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3: DAILY ASSIGNMENTS

GRAY WOLVES IN YELLOWSTONE

In the 1800's and early 1900's, wolves in Northern Idaho, Western Montana and parts of

Wyoming were hunted to great extents because they were viewed as animals dangerous to people

and to livestock. By 1926, the population of wolves in Yellowstone Park had been eliminated.

Wolf populations outside of the Park, as well, were greatly reduced. In Yellowstone, since the

wolves had gone missing, many other changes started to come about. Elk populations, for

example, grew to enormous numbers. The increase in Elk, an animal that tends to forage on

young Aspen trees along riversides, virtually destroyed all of the sapling aspen from growing

and reaching maturity. Over time, the aspen population in Yellowstone was significantly

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diminished. Numerous songbirds, that make their homes in aspen trees, have also been missing

from the Park since the absence of the wolves.

REINTRODUCING THE WOLVES

75 years later, in 1995, 31 wolves were captured in Canada and reintroduced to Yellowstone

Park. After only 13 years, in 2008, the wolf population in Yellowstone had reached 100. The elk

population meanwhile, had fallen to just 6,000, from an estimated 18,000 in 1995. With the

reduction in elk, aspen growth also increased. Songbirds as well have reportedly been sighted in

the Park once again.

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Questions:

1) Draw a graph showing the population of wolves over time. Make sure to include pre-

settlement years, 1926, 1995, and 2008 on the graph. Then, on the same graph, show population

changes for elk and aspen. Estimate trends where numbers do not exist.

2) Looking at your graph, does it look like the system is stable? Some feared that a

reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone could get out of hand, that the wolves would continue to

grow in numbers and drive the elk to extinction. Why is this not likely to occur? Why were the

elk able to nearly drive the aspen to extinction?

3) A KEYSTONE species is a species upon which other factors in the ecosystem are heavily

dependent. The grey wolf in Yellowstone is one such species, since its presence affects the elk,

aspen, songbird, and other populations. Another KEYSTONE species in Yellowstone that was

affected by the absence of the grey wolf was the beaver. The beaver is an animal that blocks

water flows in streams and provides habitat for trout, aquatic insects and various vegetation.

How do you think the beaver was affected by the absence of the grey wolf? How do you think

this affected fish, aquatic insect and riparian vegetation populations?

4) Next to each arrow below, indicate with a (+) or (-) sign what effect an increase in the

previous population would have on the population it affects.

For example, an increase in the grey wolf population results in an (increase or decrease) of the

elk population...

...an increase in the elk population results in an (increase or decrease) of the aspen

population...

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5) Copy the same chart you made from number one above. This time, along with wolf, elk and

vegetation, add population trend lines for songbirds, beavers, trout and aquatic insect

populations. How do the trend lines you just drew relate to the arrows in number four above?

6) Look at the map showing the wolves original and present day territory. What factors may have

caused this reduction?

---WRITING ASSIGNMENT (1-2 pages): "Tipping point" is a term used to refer to the balance

of a system. When a system is thrown too far out of equilibrium, the tipping point is reached, and

a new equilibrium must be formed. Think of some examples of tipping points in other systems

and discuss what they have in common. Does every system have a tipping point?

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FIRE IN PONDEROSA PINE FORESTS

In the Western United States, Native

Americans frequently used fire to control the

growth of vegetation in forests. They knew

that after fire swept through forested areas,

growth of vegetation followed a process

called SUCCESSION. In Ponderosa Pine

forests, the first plants to cover the ground

after a fire are fast growing herbaceous

plants and grasses that need lost of light.

Next, this period is followed by a take-over

of slow-growing and shade-tolerant woody

species. Because much of the vegetation

used by Native Americans were early

succession plants (seed plants, berry plants,

camas, grasses for grazing animals as well as for basket-making and other uses) fire was used

frequently by the Native Americans. But since the arrival of Europeans settlers, fires have been

used less frequently. Furthermore, since the early 1900's, the Forest Service has largely

suppressed many of the natural fires in the Western United States. In fact, the density of trees in

forests has in many cases increased drastically due to increased plantings for timber production.

Because of this, many of the Ponderosa forests in our area now have significantly different

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vegetation structures than previous times. Preventing fires can, in some cases, make forests more

susceptible to disease, insect infestations and fire.

REINSTATING HISTORICAL FIRE REGIMES

Foresters these days have tried to emulate the historical fire regimes of the past. By frequently

using small, controlled fires to "clean-up" the debris in thick forests, they believe they can keep

forest ecosystems healthier.

Questions:

1) Draw a picture of a young Ponderosa Pine tree. As these trees mature, the branches with

needles move higher and higher up the trunk. Now draw a mature tree. Given that the bark on the

Ponderosa Pine is not very flammable, why do you think this tree is regarded as "fire-tolerant"?

2) Draw two more mature Ponderosa trees. Use the first tree to show what the forest floor looks

like in early succession stage after a fire. Use the other mature tree to show the later succession

stage. Discuss why frequent fires can keep these forests "healthier."

3) Draw a bird's-eye view of an historical Ponderosa Pine forest. (Use * for Ponderosa, / for

grasses, and ~ for shade-tolerant species). Now draw the same forest one hundred years later

without fire. Which looks more vulnerable to fire? Which looks more vulnerable to disease and

insect infestations?

---WRITING ASSIGNMENT (1-2 pages): Imagine you are the manager of a forest. You have to

keep the forest healthy from fire, disease and insects, protect endangered species that live in the

forest, as well as supply the public with a constant amount of timber each year. Write a plan

discussing how you will do these things.

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INVASIVE PLANTS

Invasive plants are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide. Invasive plants are

plants that grow quickly and aggressively, displacing other plants. Some invasive plants, called

noxious weeds, are non-native plants that have been introduced through human actions. Due to

their aggressive growth and lack of natural enemies, they are highly destructive, competitive and

difficult to control.

RESTORATION OF PLANT ECOSYSTEMS

Understanding how plants work can give us a better insight into how we can prevent invasive

plants from reducing the biodiversity of our region. Plants photosynthesize sunlight through their

leaves and draw water from their roots to turn carbon from the atmosphere into carbon of sugar

form. This sugar form of carbon is what the plant uses to build its cells, or biomass--and different

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plants allocate this biomass to different areas. For example, plants that only live one year (called

annuals) generally allocate the majority of their biomass to leaves and reproductive organs (to

ensure they can take advantage of sunlight and produce enough seeds before the fall arrives).

Other plants (called perennials), that live two or more years, generally minimize leaf allocation

and forgo seed production, instead allocating much of their biomass to their stalk, ensuring

insulation and strength throughout the winter.

Changes in habitat provide opportunities for invasive plants to exploit. For example, when trees

are cut down in the forest, the opening allows sunlight to reach the forest floor, providing

sunlight for otherwise shaded and suppressed invasive plants.

Questions:

1) Draw the phases of an annual plant, in each of the four seasons. Now do the same for a

perennial plant.

2) If these two plants you just drew were seeded in the ground at the same time, which plant do

you think would grow taller faster?

3) Invasive plants are plants from outside areas that take advantage of some available niche in

the ecosystem. What kinds of advantages might they have over natives?

4) Why do you think invasive plants are predominant in highly disturbed areas, such as clear-cut

forests and alongside highway roads?

---WRITING ASSIGNMENT: Invasive plants are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity

worldwide. What do you think we can do about invasive plants?

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URBANIZATION

Many believe urbanization to be the leading cause of world-wide losses in biodiversity of

species. Aside from the obvious reason of the conversion of wild land into ―developed‖ land,

urbanization also affects biodiversity through habitat fragmentation, spread of invasive species,

increased pollution, climate change and numerous other ways. Many of these effects of

urbanization combine with one another to make matters worse. Roads, for example, are a form of

habitat fragmentation, since they create barriers for organisms to cross, but they also assist in the

spread of invasive species. Population growth, combined with urban sprawl, waste management,

and other city planning decisions, affect wild environments directly and indirectly through the

air, water and soil pollutants that carry well beyond the borders of the city. Inside of cities, the

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urban environment imposes living conditions that are difficult for most native organisms to

survive in.

URBAN ECOLOGY

With populations on the rise, planners are currently seeking new ways to avoid and manage the

―urban sprawl‖ that has accompanied the growth of American cities for the past century. ―Smart

growth‖ refers to dense development, in which resources such as water, groceries, libraries and

schools, are allocated to serve populations more efficiently. ―Smart growth‖ also refers to cities

in which a diverse number of species can survive. Scientists who track the spread of invasive

species in cities have attempted to establish restoration plans to eradicate or control plant

populations within urban areas. Creating and preserving natural areas inside of cities provides

habitat for supporting a variety of bird and plant species, and even some wildlife, which can

significantly increase the biodiversity of urban areas.

Questions:

1) What causes urban sprawl? How does urban sprawl differ than smart growth?

2) Some say that urban sprawl could be curbed by raising the price of gas…how would this

work?

3) Look at the map of Spokane‘s proposed Urban Growth Boundary (from google, search:

―initial Spokane Urban growth boundary proposal‖). The shaded in areas are the areas

that Spokane City plans to develop or ―urbanize,‖ in order to accommodate the next 20

years of population growth in Spokane. What effects will this type of growth have on the

surrounding wild areas? How can we reduce the amount of land we use for

accommodating the future population?

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4) Urbanization is generally accompanied by other resource extractive industries

(agriculture, mining, logging, etc.) How has agriculture affected biodiversity of species?

What about logging?

Writing assignment (1-2 pages): World-wide human populations have risen dramatically in

the past few centuries (and are continuing to rise). This has generally contributed to a

dramatic decrease in the global diversity of species What factors, (political, social, cultural,

education) affect this trend?

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STORMWATER IN THE SPOKANE WATERSHED

Only a few years ago, in front of the

Long Lake Dam along the Spokane

River, large algae blooms could once

be seen floating on top of the water.

The blooms were caused by the

pollutants (namely sewage) that were

dumped into the River by the City of

Spokane. Algae of this kind feed on

Phosphorus (an element in high

concentrations in sewage). Other

contributors to the pollution included fertilizer and pesticide runoff from agricultural lands,

sediment from construction and timber harvesting areas, and urban runoff rushed down the storm

drains during rain storms (things like pollution from cars and car tires, household garbage and

toxins, various chemicals, etc). An imbalance in nutrients is harmful to many stream organisms,

disrupts ecosystem processes, and can cause health problems for people when groundwater

becomes contaminated.

WATERSHED RESTORATION

Restoring running rivers is complicated because downstream areas are always subject to all

upstream sources of water. A WATERSHED is a term used to describe an entire catchment of

rainfall--that is, all water that eventually ends up in the same river, including all the smaller

rivers and streams feeding into it. Thus, the restoration of a watershed in an urban area may

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involve the prevention of pollutants from reaching the stream in rural, forested, or agricultural

areas upstream. Some techniques used are the creation of riparian buffers, artificial wetlands,

permeable surfaces and "living roofs."

Questions:

1) Look at the map of downtown Spokane. Shade in the areas you think are probably

pavement, or surfaces that are otherwise impermeable to water. Draw a cross-section

spanning the width of the river, and including the downtown area and several meters

below ground. Now imagine what this area may have looked like 200 years ago, and

compare the time it takes rain water to reach the groundwater in each case.

2) Riparian buffers are vegetation zones around the edges of rivers or streams that absorb

rainwater and excessive nutrients carried within it, soaking up the polluted water before it

is able to reach the stream. Look at the map above and explain why ‗living roofs‘ would

work the same way.

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3) Artificial wetlands are diverse ecosystems that are able to breakdown storm water

nutrients, and even some heavy metals, through a process known as

PHYTOREMEDIATION. Given what you know about how ecosystems work, why might

this be a dangerous method to rely upon for storm water treatment?

WRITING ASSIGNMENT (1-2 pages): Design a watershed management plan for

Spokane. How will you address the sources of pollution and what areas of the river will

you set up your projects? (use the map on the first page if it helps).

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WATER USE IN SPOKANE

In 2000, the average person in Spokane County used 217 gallons of water per day. During

summer months, the amount of water use triples. Washington State used only 114 gallons per

day in 2000. Almost the ALL the difference is due to the watering of landscapes. In Spokane, we

obtain our drinking water from the aquifer. The aquifer, however, is closely correlated to the

amount of water in the River. When we draw water from the aquifer, it lowers the water in the

River by a similar amount.

DISSOLVED OXYGEN

Dissolved oxygen (D0) is a term that refers to the amount of oxygen present in water. Water that

is well-mixed, turbulent and cold generally has higher amounts of dissolved oxygen than water

that is still and warm. Organisms in the river require a minimum amount of dissolved oxygen in

the water to survive. During summer months in Spokane, the amount of dissolved oxygen in the

stream reaches dangerously low levels. Efforts have been made to increase the amount of

dissolved oxygen in the River, to save fish and insect populations.

Questions:

1) Draw a graph of the amount of water used per person in Spokane over 12 months. How much

does each person use per month? How much does each person use per year? Given that the

population of Spokane County in 2000 was 417,939 how much water was used during the

summer months (J,J,A) that year? The population of Washington State in 2000 was 5,894,121.

How do

2) Put a (+) for an increase or a (-) for a decrease in the following flow chart designating where

the water in aquifer goes:

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Quantity of

water in River

Temp of River DO of River Biotic Integrity

of River

River

Lawns

3) What kinds of things can we do to reduce the amount of water used in summer months?

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DAM REMOVAL IN THE ELWHA WATERSHED

Prior to the damming of most rivers

and streams in this country, aquatic

communities underwent frequent

flood regimes similar in effect to the

fire regimes imposed on forests by

the Native Americans. Organisms

that exist on the floodplains of rivers

depend upon frequent floods to flush

nutrients to their shores, just as organisms surviving at the lower portions of streams depend

upon nutrient inputs from the headwaters (or source). In the Olympic National Park in

Washington, the Elwha and Glines Canyon dams imposed great barriers to the migrating fish

populations. The Elwha River was historically home to all five species of Pacific Salmon,

including Chinook, Chum, Coho, Pink, and Sockeye, but since the dams have been imposed, the

Salmon have been restricted from reaching their historical spawning grounds.

REMOVAL AND RESTORATION

The Elwha and Glines Canyon dams are scheduled to be removed in 2011. Scientists predict the

restoration will provide salmon with suitable spawning grounds, as well as benefit the local

ecosystem.

Questions:

1) Draw a bird-eye view of a river, from the headwaters (source) to the delta (ocean). Explain

why rivers tend to get wider as you move downstream.

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2) Every year, thousands of salmon return from the ocean where they've grown large from

consuming marine nutrients, to spawn and soon after, die. The eggs the salmon lay in the sand

become young fry in a few months, but what do you think happens to the body of the returning

salmon?

3) Redraw your stream from number one above. Indicate the fluxes of carbon at each length of

the river (headwaters, mid-section, and delta).

4) The two functions of a river are said to be 1) move sediment and 2) transport nutrients.

Discuss some of the ways a dam disrupts these functions.

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SOIL HEALTH IN THE DUST BOWL

Prior to the Great Depression,

American farmland was in a crisis.

Overused and poorly managed farms

would lose centimeters of precious

topsoil to the air whenever winds blew.

By plowing the native grasses, and

extensively tilling the subsequent farm

land, farmers destroyed the natural

vegetative anchors that held the soil in place. When a drought occurred, the soil would turn to

dust and be lost to the wind. Furthermore, the complex processes underground that determine

soil health were (and still are) a mystery to many farmers and growers.

SOIL HEALTH TODAY

A better understanding of the soil's interaction with air and water can give us a clue as to its

vegetative capacity. Microorganisms are tiny bacteria and fungi that live in the soil and feed on

nutrients in the air or on decaying organic matter on the ground. The amount of microbial

activity in the soil is one measure of the soil's health, because it means nutrients are rapidly being

cycled through the system and are thus available for uptake. The presence of humus, the thin

layer of dark soil just below the surface, but above the layer of hard minerals, is composed of

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organic matter, and is another measure of soil health. A third measure of soil health is the

amount of carbon in the soil, since carbon gives us a rough idea of the amount of organic matter.

Soil pH, which measures the soil's acidity (1-6) or alkalinity (8-14) as compared to pure water

(7), is the fourth measure of soil health.

Questions:

1) Draw a cross-sectional diagram of good soil, and label the layers. Now label on the diagram

each of the four measures of soil health.

2) Tilling is a process that loosens up the soil and exposes carbon to the air. Chemically, explain

what may happen to the soil overtime with extensive tilling.

3) Draw a water molecule, and identify the location of the electrons in each atom. Show how

water can easily separate into free Hydrogen and Hydroxyl ions, and give the charges for each of

these. Draw a diagram that shows the chemical makeup of water in an acid soil (more positively

charged) and a basic soil (more negatively charged).

4) Very good growing soil has a pH that is slightly acidic (6.4). But soil that is too acidic is bad

for growing plants. Calcium is one nutrient found in soils that is very soluble in water, and when

it rains, it can leach out of the soil and be replaced by elements such as aluminum and iron. How

do you think rain such as this may affect the pH of the soil?

5) Many plants have symbiotic relationships with mycorrhiza--fungi in the soil. The mycorrhiza

help the plants find water, and the plant gives sugar in exchange. First draw this interaction

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labeling the chemical exchanges happening. Then think of some ways the soil could be damaged

so that this interaction may not occur.

WRITING ASSIGNMENT (1-2 pages): Soil is an element of the Earth that is rarely thought of

as 'alive.' Why do you think this is, and why is protecting and understanding soil important?

What could happen if we don't manage it intelligently?

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CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate change caused by global warming is attributable to three variables in the environment:

radiation from the sun, the absorptiveness of the earth's surface to sunlight, and the chemical

composition of our atmosphere. The radiation we receive from the sun is roughly constant and

varies only with our relative distance from the sun. The surface of the earth can reflect or absorb

differing amounts of radiation. The chemical composition of our atmosphere, which is changing

(and has changed significantly in the last 100 years), can also absorb, reflect or transmit radiation

from the sun, affecting the earth's surface temperatures drastically.

THE CARBON CYCLE

The atmosphere is composed of the following gases (called greenhouse gases because they trap

radiation from the sun and heat the earth's surface): water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane,

nitrous oxide, and ozone. Carbon, from deep beneath the surface of the earth is used to create

fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are what we've burned increasingly since the Industrial Revolution (late

1800's) and which turns into CO2 in the atmosphere.

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Questions:

1) Draw a diagram showing the fluxes of radiation from the sun to the earth's surface. Make sure

to include all possible courses of radiation.

2) Draw a diagram showing the fluxes of carbon from the earth to the atmosphere. Indicate the

possible ways carbon can move from one to the other.

3) How might tilling the soil too much increase the amount of Carbon in the atmosphere?

4) The burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are said to be the two main contributors to

Climate Change. Why deforestation?

5) The melting of the ice caps on the poles of the earth is said to be a viscous cycle that

accelerates global warming. How might this be possible?

WRITING ASSIGNMENT (1-2 pages): There is much talk about 'reducing carbon footprints.'

Carbon footprints are the amount of greenhouse gases a single person releases to the atmosphere

on a daily or yearly basis. Do you feel this is a choice most people are able to make (think about

the necessities we live by: transportation, food, shelter, etc). What kinds of things can we as

individuals do to reduce world-wide carbon use?