Building a Nature Trail to TeachJunior High School Science*

Helen SwongerUniversity of Toledo, Toledo, Ohio

The emerging modern concept of American education maintainsthat the primary role of the schools is to provide the environmentalsetting wherein each student can be brought into daily contact withthose experiences which will best enable him to lead a purposeful lifein his formative years and ultimately to prepare him for competentadult citizenship. The natural out-of-doors appears to be one broadarea of these experiences which is largely being denied children matur-ing in present day society. Cultural and economic forces includingindustrialization, urbanization, and technological advances haveserved greatly to reduce opportunities for our children to have directexperiences in this atmosphere of nature. The human need for "greenearth and blue sky^ grows stronger proportionately with this mech-anization of our age. Schools exist to serve this human need as well asthe multitude of others for which society delegates responsibility.There is the possibility that some day in the not too distant future

the schools may discover themselves the only islands of natural soli-tude in the midst of endless miles of houses and factories. In fact bythe year 2000 A.D. the United States population will have exceeded250,000,000 people concentrated in 23 megalopolises of which Detroit-Toledo-Cleveland at the west-south border of Lake Erie will be one.Roughly twenty times as much recreational and conserved-park terri-tory will be needed one hundred years from now as exists today.Actually no widespread programs of land segregation are even underconsideration. Furthermore, with declining water resources through-out the country there is a need to alert teachers and students to thevital necessity for conversation of our water resources. Now is theopportune time for far-sighted, conservation-minded school adminis-trators to encourage their school districts to acquire wooded plots ofland for present and future school sites. Careful long range planning isneeded because all to soon these natural plots will be non-existent ornot economically feasible to purchase.

In Ohio conservation education, by state statute, is legally a neces-sary function of every public school system. However, the implemen-tation of this function remains the responsibility of the individualschool organization. One school system, the Sylvania City Schools,maintains that one meaningful way to more than adequately serve

* Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the Central Association of Science & Mathematics Teachers.Detroit, Michigan November 28, 1964.

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Building a Nature Trail 297

this legal requirement is through the use of a woods garden labora-tory. They feel that an outdoors laboratory helps provide a scienceprogram rich in real life experiences through making physical bio-logical phenomena readily available for observation and experimenta-tion by students at all levels of ability. With this philosophical basis avitally interested group of school administrators, teachers, students,university consultants and community naturalists conceived and exe-cuted the building of a nature trail to help teach junior high science.What are the details? McCord Junior High School, Sylvania, was

constructed in 1962-63. A copse of approximately one acre of the OakOpenings type was purposively left in native style behind the school.This entire Oak Openings area within which the school is located isroughly three miles wide and six miles long; lying immediately west ofToledo. The site receives as much rainfall as does other usually richlyproductive regions in and around Toledo and in certain sections iscovered with a luxuriant growth of native plants. Nevertheless it re-mains worthless for farming. State soil tests reveal that all elementsof plant food are lacking. Sand dunes predominate; some as high asthirty feet grade into flat lowlands. The water table is within two orthree feet of the surface, and quick-sand soon clogs any tile used fordrainage purposes.Although the area is covered with many native plants there re-

mains a scarcity of some of the rarer specimens of wild flowers thatwould ordinarily flourish here. Professor Edwin L. Mosely, whoseexhaustive botanical survey of the Oak Openings area was publishedby the Ohio Academy of Science in 1928, attributes this scarceness tothe extensive forest fires which raged through the area during theterrible draught of the fall of 1871. Even the muck which had accumu-lated in the marshes burned along with the drier grasses and bushes.In many cases the remaining wild flowers have been thoughtlesslypicked, or worse, dug up by the roots and removed.

Using Mosely^s list of plants prior to 1871 as a guide, plantings ofspecies capable of naturalizing or re-naturalizing were begun. Thisfollowed the preliminary preparation of beds within the wooded areaby junior high special education classes. Sites for these flower bedswere chosen with regard to easy accessibility from the three foot widesawdust covered trail. Roughly ten square feet was allowed for eachone. The relative amount of light and shade was also a consideration.Wherever feasible the natural contours of the area were followed.Throughout the project especial pains were taken to leave undis-turbed numerous natural shelters for the small wild game animals aswell as for bird life.

Subsequently much has been accomplished. Three wells have beendug by the students in order to help compensate for the extremely dry

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summers. Although the dryness tends to keep the weeds and lowgrowing shrubs under control, it also is, of course, highly detrimentalto any newly planted variety of wildflower. The students have madearrangements to purchase, for a nominal sum, fifty feet of com-mercial greenhouse. They plan to dismantle and then reassemble itvery close to the school for further plant experimental purposes. Alsoplans are in the formative stage, not only for school garden plots tobe developed in an adjacent cleared field, but also for the planting ofevergreens for future commercial harvesting. The junior high schoolscience classes now feel they have an ecological laboratory just out-side the doors of their classrooms�which open directly out to thetract.Thus the woods garden project has become an integral part of the

total curriculum of the Sylvania school system through providing:(1) a means for the development of a truly problem-centered ap-proach ecological study; (2) for closer community relations throughuse of resource people; (3) opportunities for direct student involve-ment in plant naturalization; (4) for related subject-matter correla-tion ; and (5) for a contribution to the achievement of broad conserva-tion objectives of the educational process.

In conclusion several illuminating factors became apparent as thebuilding of the nature trail under discussion progressed. First there isalways a need for administrative and supervisory personnel to possessand actively demonstrate an abiding faith in the aesthetic and aca-demic worthwhileness of the project. Second, the teachers, who areperhaps the core of any curriculum improvement program, should bevitally interested and enthusiastically committed to the educativevalue of a living laboratory. These teachers need to be allowed tooperate in an atmosphere of encouragement and freedom to developindividual lessons and comprehensive teaching units which most fullyutilize the natural resourses at their disposal. Third, and of para-mount importance for maximum and longest lasting educationalbenefit, the students, as citizens of the total school and communityenvironment must become intimately involved in the organization,building and maintenance of the nature trail. When these forces workco-operatively in a community of endeavor the result becomes morethan mere lip-service to the educational philosophy of "learning bydoing.??

CASMT CONVENTION

CHICAGO-1965