Rain Forest Teaches Children Lesson in Life

For Beverly Revness and Janice Tarr, the school year that ended Friday was a long, difficult and tumultuous one, but comments from students like 10-year-old Natasha Roje give them hope that it was not all in vain.

“I wonder, if I have children,” Natasha told a classroom visitor recently, “if they’ll ever get to know about the rain forests, or if they have to see pictures and stuff.”

Small-Scale Triumph

Revness and Tarr, teachers at Kenter Canyon Elementary School in Brentwood, have spent the year raising the environmental consciousness of their fourth- and fifth-graders with a joint project for the two classes.

While many parents, teachers and students will remember the 1988-89 school year as the year of a teachers strike that highlighted the many troubles facing urban public education, others may prefer to find hope in the small-scale triumphs that take place in classrooms such as this one.

Drawing from a range of public and private resources, Revness and Tarr assembled a year-long environmental awareness project for their classes which will be entered in a federal competition sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency. The program, drawing hundreds of applicants a year, recognizes 10 precollegiate projects around the nation for outstanding service to the environment. Winning entrants are honored with a three-day trip to Washington.

Together, the Kenter Canyon teachers fashioned a year-long curriculum centered on what scientists say is one of the most serious threats to the world’s environment: the destruction of the globe’s tropical rain forests.

Back in September, most of the children would have been unable to even locate such forests on a map. Now, many show a remarkable grasp of some of the complex issues at stake.

In one recent class, for example, they talked about how some American fast-food chains contribute to deforestation by obtaining their beef from cattle raised cheaply on cleared tropical land in South America and Indochina. At one point, some of the students announced that they would boycott the chains that did so. On other occasions, the students have written the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Commerce and Agriculture departments to urge a halt to policies that encourage economic exploitation of such lands.

Students Bused In

The Kenter students, despite the school’s location in affluent Brentwood, are relatively representative of the Los Angeles school district. About one-third of the 500 children are bused in from overcrowded inner-city areas. The student body is about two-thirds white, 21% Latino, 8% Asian-American and 7% black. Slightly more than one-sixth of the students have been designated to have limited English proficiency.

Spoken to individually, the children in Revness and Tarr’s classes are eager to explain what they have learned in lessons throughout the year.

“They’re cutting down all the rain forest trees and they’re burning them,” says 9-year-old Dana Horstein. Citing a makeshift textbook of environmentalist publications assembled by her teachers, she says rain forests are being destroyed in the tropics at the rate of 50 acres per minute.

Environmentalists caution that at the current rate of use, such forests will be completely cut down by 2050, at devastating cost. Up to half the life forms on Earth live in the affected regions, including key sources for many drugs, such as those used to combat childhood leukemia. Scientists also caution that burning the trees amounts to a double-barreled contribution to global warming--the so-called “greenhouse effect.” Combustion adds pollutants and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, while removal of trees decreases the planet’s ability to absorb the gas, believed to be the key factor in trapping the sun’s heat in the atmosphere.

Developers clear the forests for lumber, cattle-grazing land and commercial development.

“By cutting down the trees it’s going to make it hotter . . . and it’ll be all gone and it’ll be really hot,” Dana adds.

Making Pollution

Rene Ramirez, 9, says: “I don’t know, when they’re cutting down the trees, if they’re thinking.”

“I think they should . . . be more careful about it,” adds Maiko Morishita, 10. “If they cut down the rain forest and burn it they’re making pollution.”

“What I’m looking for when I’m teaching this course is to make these kids become trustees of the environment,” says Revness, 60. A 25-year supporter of the Sierra Club and member of Greenpeace, the Audubon Society and World Wildlife Fund, Revness initiated the Kenter project and is a three-time recipient of a California teaching award for environmental awareness.

“We have assumed an activist role. The children unfortunately do not have the money to join these organizations, but in spirit any time that they can work on (related projects) they do,” says Revness. “You see, the first thing you have to do is motivate the children. And then it becomes a matter of education. . . . I just don’t want them to grow up and feel ‘This isn’t happening around here and so this isn’t happening (at all).’ ”

The curriculum for the yearlong course drew from a wide variety of sources. Revness and Tarr, with the part-time assistance of June Carter, an undergraduate geography major at UCLA, used National Geographic videotapes in conjunction with several outings to the Los Angeles and San Diego Zoos to show children tropical wildlife, much of which faces extinction if deforestation patterns continue.

Animal Habitats

Later, zoo docents visited the classroom to lecture in more detail about animal habitats and food chains.

Pamphlets from environmental groups such as the Rainforest Action Network or the World Wildlife Fund supplemented classroom materials depicting the tropical ecosystem, while the teachers adapted environmental themes for discussions and lessons ranging from social studies to art.

The heart of the yearlong project is a 4-by-6-foot scale model of an Amazonian rain forest created by the students. Using paint, Mylar, acetate, clay, Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and such, the students assembled a forest scene including a cattle pen, aboriginal inhabitants, loggers, road-builders and native animal species.

“We did the animals,” said Maiko and Natasha proudly.

Carter took Revness’s fifth-graders and Tarr’s fourth-graders on field trips to collect pebbles and branches for the model, while helping them design the forest based on maps and textbooks. One student’s retired grandfather helped by donating labor and craft work.

“This is kind of unusual for fourth- and fifth-grade classes to do,” says Kenter Principal Suzanne Westmoreland. “It went into an area of geography into depth. The children were really learning about the fragile balance of ecology.”

Learn By Doing

“It’s kind of a ‘learn-by-doing’ project,” says Revness, who says the students learned more by physically reconstructing what they had been taught. “(Environmentalism) doesn’t exist in a vacuum.”

The model’s designers like to talk about their work.

“We’re trying to show how dumb it is to put the cattle in the rain forest because the tigers and the lions just eat the cattle,” says Philip Anson, 11. “You have to be aware” of the issues, says Philip.

Others take a more reflective stance. Sometimes, “you just feel you can’t do anything” when confronted with the scope of international actions, Natasha says. But her own formula for countering hopelessness reflects Revness’ personal guideline.

“What I look for in students is passion and commitment,” says the teacher, who began her career concentrating on civics and U.S. law.

For Natasha, the responsibility is clear. “You start thinking your vote can count, and then you make more letters and phone calls until you get more people to do something.”