The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Homestead High junior and Environmental Volunteer Simone Guazelli leads a hike at Stevens Creek County Park.

Nature Walk

Pupils turn teacher in environmental program

By Katherine Petersen

Krista Elledge, a Homestead High School senior, stopped her group of second-graders near a dual-colored walnut tree for another pop quiz.

"Why do you think the tree is two different colors?" Elledge asked the inquisitive children, who were visiting Stevens Creek Park from Cumberland School.

"Because there's shade coming down and no sunlight?" ventured Patrick Loomis. A good guess, replied Elledge, a leader in the Environmental Volunteers program. But not quite right. There are actually two trees fused together--one an English walnut that produces tasty nuts, and the other a native American tree, which grows more easily in the soil of the park. Long ago, missionaries encountered the problem of getting walnut trees to grow in the area. They came up with the solution of cutting a V in the stem of the native tree and splicing the English tree into the notch.

Elledge and her partner, fellow senior Casey Evans, taught this and other lessons during a 90-minute hike along the park's nature trail. The Homestead students joined Environmental Volunteers, an organization that tries to spur children's interest in the environment, along with 15 others from their school. All went through eight weeks of training before working with the younger kids on their own. The hike was the culminating event of their studies in "EV."

Environmental Volunteers is celebrating its 25th year of operation this year, said program director Karen Messenheimer.

"I think it's important for kids to experience the environment," Elledge said. "They comprehend things better when they can touch things."

The younger students get more than a lecture.

"We hope that seeing things in real life after studying them in the classroom will help them retain some of the information," Evans said, adding that the grade-schoolers tend to look up to their high school leaders because they're closer to their own age than teachers.

"Plus, we're not out here to discipline them, we're just here to show them things," Evans said.

Sunnyvale resident Barb Zoellin-Malm, who has been an "EV" for three years, also led one of the five groups of Cumberland students through the park's trails, pointing out different birds and flowers along the way. She usually does something with Environmental Volunteers about once a week.

Zoellin-Malm first learned about the program when her daughter, now in second grade, brought home a flier, and quickly signed up for training. She first studied forests and foothills, which is what Cumberland students saw in real life at Stevens Creek Park last week.

The other subjects volunteers teach are baylands ecology, nature in your neighborhood, early California Indians and environmental focus, marine ecology, earthquake and water science and conservation.

Environmental Volunteers has about 150 participants, a combination of retired people, other community members and parents, who work with children in both Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. The organization provides its services in two ways: Either an entire school requests the program and each grade level learns about a different subject, or a teacher requests a program appropriate for his/her curriculum, Zoellin-Malm said.

"We try to maintain consistency so kids don't get forests and foothills for three years running," she said. "There's always a waiting list."

The program's concept was developed by a few women who were concerned about the Palo Alto Baylands and felt that if they educated children about its valuable resources, they would grow up to appreciate and protect the area, Zoellin-Malm said.

Before the kids go out in the field, volunteers make presentations in the classroom setting. The volunteers bring in stuffed skins of birds and mammals and replicas of tracks to give the kids an idea of the environment and how it works before they see it for themselves, Zoellin-Malm said.

She raided Orchard Supply's stash of colored paint chips--small pieces of paper in different colors--so the kids could try to find the same colors as they walked through the park.

While Loomis found 11 things to match his green chip, Jessica Salans didn't find a match to her gray-blue color until just before the hike ended.

"I found one. The water matches my color," she said, pointing at a murky creek with the sun shining through the trees onto it.

Elledge and Evans shared a little of everything with their group, from the habits of lizards and blue jays to how running water smooths rocks. The students even learned how to analyze horse scat (commonly known among the students as horse poop).

"I touched it," squealed Lindsay Dana, after examining the scat. Elledge laughed and just reminded her to wash her hands.

Dana warned everyone about poison oak as they walked along the narrow, rocky trails, and pointed out that one can tell animal tracks apart because some animals walk on flat feet while others walk on their "toenails."

Although the kids had a hard time remembering some of the words they learned on their adventure, the concepts seemed to stick.

"My favorite part was seeing how bumpy rocks become smooth," Salans said, as the group chatted after their walk.

"This is sad. I can't believe our project's over," Evans said. "We're not going to do this again."

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, May 21, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.