By Mary Stuever

“Stand in the middle here, you are the heartwood,” I tell the seventh grade teacher who knew the word ‘cambium’ when I asked the group to explain the parts of a tree. In the next few minutes twenty-one teachers simulate the functions of a single tree. Some sit on the ground, making sucking noises for roots. Others join their hands in concentric circles representing sapwood, cambium, inner bark and outer bark—each circle voices noises consistent with tree functions. In twenty minutes we have giggled, joined hands, and praised the virtues of tree biology. We have become one with the tree. We have become one. For a moment, we are the living organism in our minds. It is an experience that we want to pass on to children. The activity has a name, “Tree Factory”, and along with 95 other activities about the environment, it is found in a guidebook called Project Learning Tree.

Project Learning Tree (PLT) is more than an activity guide, it is a program. Launched in 1976, PLT is now active in ten countries, fifty states, and mind-boggling numbers of classrooms. Teachers attend a day-long workshop and receive activity guides (a single guide for pre-kindergarten through eighth grade; thematic guides for high school covering current issues from waste management to forest fires). By the end of the day, they have participated in five or six activities they can do immediately with their students. They have learned how to prepare for the other 90 activities. They have a crosswalk describing how each of these activities meets state and national education standards. They are tapped into grant programs to fund field trips and projects that connect their students to the outdoors. They waddle out the door, laden with posters, brochures, coloring books, Smokey Bear pencils and rulers, and enthusiasm for bringing forest fun and learning into the classroom.

From its inception, PLT developed a format that became standard for creating environmental education programs. Teachers met with natural resource professionals to brainstorm ways children could learn about the forest. Foresters described core information needed to understand forest ecosystems. Teachers explained how children learn. Biologists learned education terms like “constructivism” (building on what students already know) and “kinesthetic” (learning through bodily engagement). Educators learned environmental terms like “riparian” (occurring near water) and “succession” (natural progression of changes in plant communities). Working together they created engaging activities that could be replicated in classrooms around the world.

Project Learning Tree is sponsored by the American Forest Foundation. Admittedly tongue-in-cheek, I describe the evolution of PLT and several “sister” environmental education programs in this context. After Earth Day, teachers and foresters realized they needed to get together to help kids (who would inherit the earth) have the information they needed to save the world. They created a bunch of fun games and activities that used forests as a window into understanding natural resources. While PLT taught about all aspects of the environment, the wildlife biologists took a look at the program and said “hey, we need more focus on wildlife”, so teachers and wildlife biologists got together and created Project WILD (1983). The fish biologists though felt fish were underrepresented so they found some teachers and created Aquatic Project WILD (1987). Yet other water resource managers felt there was more to water than fish issues, thus Project WET (Water Education for Teachers, 1995) was developed. Across the country, the model continued—teachers and natural resources managers finding ways to excite kids about the outdoors.

Like cambium, the thin layer of specials cells located between bark and wood where growth occurs, the excitement is in this area of interaction. Natural resource agencies now recognize their role to support education. Educators know they are responsible for enhancing their students’ natural intelligences. The result is, although politicians are just learning to talk about subjects like climate change, a half million teachers have been preparing kids to address environmental issues for decades.

Mary Stuever, a forester with New Mexico State Forestry, has penned the syndicated monthly column “The Forester’s Log” for many years.  A collection of the columns, The Forester's Log: Musings from the Woods (UNM Press, March 2009) includes a chapter of environmental education stories spanning twenty years. She can be reached at sse@nmia.com.