Environmental Learning for Kids

1

Leslie Cook

November 18, 2004

Environmental Learning for Kids

“Who would have though that this poor city kid from Denver would ever get to graduate from college? You guys did. Both of you helped me grow up from a teenager to an adult by showing me what’s important in life: friends, family and, most importantly, the environment.”

- Andre McGregor, 2004 BrownUniversity graduate and former ELK student, to ELK founders and his mentors Stacie and Scott Gilmore (Johnson 2004)

Description of the Program:

Environmental Learning for Kids (ELK) is a non-profit based in Denver, Colorado. I found ELK on the Internet and learned what I know about them from their website and several newspaper articles that were linked to their website. The following mission, goals, description, purpose, and strategy were taken directly from the website (

MISSION:

The mission of ELK is to offer comprehensive environmental education, with consistent long-term mentoring by natural resource professionals to culturally diverse urban youth and their families to ensure they become stewards to the natural resources of the State of Colorado. We work in collaboration with many federal, state, city, and community agencies to ensure a board base of support in the fields of education and natural resources. We work with students that have not traditionally sought careers in natural resources fields - females, persons of color and others whose access to outdoor experiences may be limited.

OUR GOALS:

* To expand educational, outdoor experiences and natural resource opportunities for at-risk diverse youth (i.e., females, people of color, and others whose access to outdoor experiences may be limited).

* To motivate students to excel in school, stimulate interest in higher education and science careers.

* To develop self-respect and the skills necessary to reduce socially inappropriate behavior.

* To promote life-long responsible use and stewardship of Colorado's natural resources.

DESCRIPTION:

The strategies that we will use to reach the diverse communities in Northeast Denver are to work directly with local schools/teachers, and provide outreach to youth groups and church groups. ELK is located in the metro Denver area, specifically in the Montbello neighborhood. This gives us a unique perspective on the needs of the urban youth. We are affected by the same community issues as the families we serve. Students involved in the project will attend day long field activities that will provide them with an opportunity to grow personally and to enjoy the natural world in an educational, adventurous manner. We also assist young people to develop internal values from which they and their community will benefit. In the process of developing ELK's primary project in NE Denver we have formed partnering relationships with other community based programs, city/county, and state/federal natural resources agencies.

PURPOSE:

The formation of ELK arose from the realization of the necessity for positive action, encouragement, and support to develop responsible values and behavior in today's youth. The ELK staff has over 18 years of combined working experience with urban youth.The students must make a yearlong commitment to participate in the program as a volunteer. Students who have been involved for one year and exhibit enthusiasm and leadership are invited to become a Youth Mentor in order to provide peer support to new and continuing students. This active participation will help these young people to realize their place in the community and the surrounding environment.

STRATEGY:

The activities are designed to build on the previous one so that the students experience the most complete exposure possible to their natural environment. On each activity there is always a trained, professional wildlife and/or aquatic biologist to ensure that we are providing quality and accurate information to our students. With the outdoors as their classroom, students will come to know and understand themselves, establish new goals, and explore natural resources in Colorado. Students create slide shows of activities and practice public speaking when presenting to youth groups and neighborhood associations. Also, they are encouraged to express their experiences through journals and photographic scrapbooks.

There are two other programs that ELK is associated with and helps to run. Those two programs are Denver Youth Naturally (DYN) and Learning Environmental Action for Families (LEAF). DYN is run by the Colorado Department of Natural Resources in conjunction with ELK. The goal of DYN is to “encourage[s] personal growth through education and discovery of the outdoor environment” ( DYN takes middle school students on a variety of environmental education and outdoor recreation field trips during the summer and school year. After completion of a year in the DYN program, the students are eligible for summer jobs working for the DYN program. ELK runs the LEAF program, and LEAF works to serve families of students who participate in ELK programs. “Families engage in outdoor recreation, conservation work, and stewardship towards Colorado’s natural resources with technical guidance from ELK” ( ELK started the LEAF program because the families of students participating in ELK’s programs were enjoying them so much that the students’ parents wanted their whole families to become involved.

Logic Model:

The logic model that I developed for ELK based on their website is on the following page.

Situation: The youth in inner city Denver needed “positive action, encouragement, and support to develop responsible values and behavior” ( Two educators – one from ColoradoStateUniversity’s Division of Wildlife and one from the Colorado Department of Natural Resources - joined forces to create ELK for a student group that they felt was not getting enough environmental education (Johnson 2004).

External Factors: ELK is located in an inner-city, relatively poor Denver neighborhood. ELK is “affected by the same community issues as the families [they] serve” ( Thus, the economic situation of the community likely has a large role in how much ELK must provide to participants in the program. The inner-city environment of an urban area may also contribute to a general lack of value of environmental health and beauty.

Assumptions: Education will lead to behavior change (especially to become stewards of the natural environment). They are targeting the groups currently under-represented in natural resource careers (females and minorities). Participating in an environmental education program will increase the likelihood that a young person will pursue a career in natural resources.

Analysis

For the analysis portion of the assignment, I will examine how ELK fits into the learning theories and theories of environmental education that we discussed in class. Following my analysis of how ELK fits into the theories, I will provide recommendations for improvement of the ELK program to assist in reaching its goals.

Learning Theories

The ELK activities and trips fit well into the model of experiential learning. The students have an opportunity to experience the outdoors and an environmental concern. They are able to make and record observations and reflections through journaling. They get a chance to perform water quality tests and learn what the tests mean. Then they are able to use their new knowledge of water quality and testing to look at new situations. Thus, ELK fits well into the circular model of experiential education.

The strength of ELK in the multiple intelligences theory of learning is that by offering a variety of activities and programs they are able to meet kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, logic, verbal, visual, and naturalist styles of learning. Based on the program description ELK does not seem to offer musical or rhythmic opportunities of learning, but because it caters all of the other learning styles I do not believe ELK is, at first impression, missing a critical link. However, because this is an inner-city community that likely values music highly, they could perhaps find ways to incorporate music into their program to connect to more students.

Examining ELK using the cognitive theory of development and learning suggests that the middle and high school students that ELK targets in its program are in the concrete learning stage. They should be focusing on inquiry learning, using their resources, and identification in order to understand and learn most effectively. The ELK program does just that – facilitates the students in inquiring about the environmental health of creeks in the area where they live. They learn to use the resources available to them – provided by the CO Department of Natural Resources and CSU Division of Wildlife – to examine the water health. They also learn to identify several macroinvertebrate species that live in the creeks. Thus, based on the cognitive theory, ELK is assisting student learning.

ELK also focuses on building on each activity in order to help students “experience the most complete exposure possible to their natural environment”. Based on the constructive theory of learning, using activities and lesson that build on one another helps to construct the knowledge that the students are developing in the ELK program. However, based on the description of the literature it seems as though much of the program tells the students what they will be doing without allowing for much development of a student-centered learning environment.

Finally, I find ELK’s biggest success to be in the fact that they provide a safe and comfortable environment for the students to learn. By focusing on mentoring and leadership development as important portions of the learning process, ELK utilizes brain-based learning to create “relaxed alertness” in the students. The students also have “orchestrated immersion” in the environments that they are learning about – such as a creek or a local park. However, again it does not appear based on the website that ELK is providing student-centered learning in their initial environmental education program. However, as the students move into the leadership portions of ELK’s program they have more investment in what they are doing as leaders that want to be where they are. Thus, ELK does succeed in creating a learning environment to make the brain happy and prepared for learning.

Environmental Education Theories

ELK’s work to bring about behavior change is effective for some of their goals but not for all. ELK is successful with its leadership program because it brings in students who want to be there. Those students who choose to be in the leadership program have developed a sense of responsibility to their community and their environment through the support and education provided by ELK. By offering the chance for leadership roles for high school students, the ELK program helps to contribute to more socially appropriate behavior in the students. For example, the students must present some of what they learn to community members, family, and their peers. As presenters, the students will learn the importance of having a respectful audience and hopefully by seeing the need for a respectful audience, they will change their behavior in the long run to be more respectful, considerate community members. In terms of ELK’s goal of developing long-term stewardship though their environmental education falls short of its goal because it does not help to positively influence the perceived behavioral control and the locus-of-control in the students. Based on the description of ELK on the website, the students present what they found out about the water quality of local streams but do not have an opportunity to find ways to make improvements to the water quality.

The biggest success of ELK is by providing the students with long-term, caring mentors and contact with the natural world. These two factors likely contribute to Significant Life Experiences (SLE) for some of the students who participate in ELK. The ELK website provides descriptions of how the founders of ELK contributed to what sounds like an SLE for two students. The first is the example of Andre McGregor cited in the beginning of the paper. The second example is of Garrett Thomas, a recent graduate of CSU with a fisheries degree. Thomas said of ELK (Johnson 2004),

I was deep in the streets, living a detrimental lifestyle. It wasn’t any program, organization or foundation that got me back on track. It was Scott Gilmore [co-founder of ELK]. For the first time in my life I could look up to someone and think, ‘I can do that, too.’ I could be like him.

Both McGregor and Thomas found direction in their lives and callings to environmental careers with the help of ELK. Thus, the mentoring provided by ELK is a huge success in leading students on to stewardship of the natural environment.

Recommedations

Based on the analysis of ELK using learning and environmental education theories I have a few suggestions to improve the ELK’s likelihood of achieving its goals. First, ELK could work to incorporate music more into their program. Perhaps by using music as a way to express the beauty and wonder of the natural environment or the degradation that is occurring to the environment, ELK could better address learners who learn best using music or in a musical environment. The ELK program could also benefit from developing more student-centered practices in its curriculum. In particular, trying to make the program more student-centered for the students in the first year of the program by trying to identify and learn about areas of environmental concern that those first year students have.

Finally, ELK could be improved by developing the students’ sense of control about the environmental problems that they are studying. By enhancing the students’ perceived behavioral control of the situation that they are studying, ELK will likely have more of an impact on the long-term environmental behavior of the students. ELK also should continue with their mentoring programs and perhaps even expand it to include more mentors and more outdoor opportunities for the mentors and students to interact. Creating these opportunities for students to spend outdoors and with a mentor who cares about the student and is sincerely interested in the student’s well being and future will help ELK to be successful in achieving its goals.

Reference

Johnson, B. (2004). Through Nature, Couple Nurture Inner-City Kids. Rocky Mountain News May 14.