Flying Squirrels, Spotted Owls & Innovative Teaching

In their minds, the elementary school students are deep in the dark green inner sanctum of Oregon’s old growth forests watching a battle for the survival of the fittest.   They sit wide-eyed as a boy dressed up as the Oregon Flying Squirrel (yes there is such an animal) struts in concentric circles hunting for huckleberries, ever vigilant of his nemesis the Grey Spotted Owl.  Suddenly, a great swooshing sound is heard and the boy dressed as the spotted owl runs onto the stage in the classroom.  “Look out!” the children shout.  But it’s too late.  Screech! Hoot! Pow! The owl and squirrel tumble to the ground like avian comic book super heroes in a choreographed fight that is both violent and funny.  The children laugh with delight and cheer for the squirrel.  Then, a young environmentalist with a clip board walks onto the stage followed closely by a scraggy bearded logger with a large cardboard ax. They separate the fighting owl and squirrel, and then the four of them, the squirrel, spotted owl, environmentalist and the logger begin singing a song about the sustainability of forests and the animals that live there.  It’s an ecological musical.  The young audience loves it.  And the high school performers are having an incredibly fun experience and learning science in ways they never imagined.

Welcome to Jill Semlick’s ecology class at the Pauling Academy of Integrated Sciences (PAIS) on the Marshall Campus in Portland.  PAIS is one of the three small schools started with help from E3 and the Oregon Small Schools Initiative.  Long gone are the days when students on the Marshall campus sat in long straight rows of desks and listened to a teacher just lecture about the environment.  On this particular day, students from Semlick’s class are down the street presenting a play they wrote and produced about the environment for students at Kelly elementary school.  It’s all part of Semlick’s innovative teaching that includes “traditional” classroom work, community-based expeditionary learning, and new ways of engaging students in their education.

During the 2006-2007 school year, Semlick had 14 students in her ecology class including some special education students and other students who had low reading and math scores.  The class is designed to help students understand the science of ecology, and the main project for the year was to find out what kind of forest environment supports Oregon flying squirrels.  To do that, students needed to create a mission, hypothesis, do research on habitat and animal species, collect and analyze data, work with outside organizations like the US Forest Service and Portland State University and produce a final report with recommendations for land managers.

Semlick started the year with the students doing the same background readings and field work she had implemented the previous year, but sensed her students just weren’t getting it.  “I know my students really well, and like everything in nature they are unique and grow in different ways,” said Semlick.  “I knew that some of them would learn better by doing hands-on activities, and so I shifted gears and revised my class plan.”

(Teacher Jill Semlick, front right, with her students and cast members.)

Semlick and her students did a significant amount of outside research in the habitat of the flying squirrels in the Wildwood Recreation area on Mt. Hood.  In fact, they spent four days mapping the area and trapping flying squirrels using animal friendly equipment provided by Portland State University and Oregon State University.  Learning to use Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) mapping devices, students established a grid center for the area and catalogued the “under story” vegetation, counted the number and types of trees in the area and recorded all of the plants and animal species they could find.  “It was a very hands-on way of teaching environmental mapping,” said Semlick. “And the students really responded well to it.”

Students and teachers spent a night in the Wildwood Recreation area and went on a night hike to fully experience the flying squirrel when they are most active. They used peanut butter and seed bait balls and placed them inside the non-lethal traps to capture the squirrels.

Back in the classroom, students spent many hours analyzing the data they had collected in the field and produced a comprehensive written report with recommendations that was presented to a panel of land resource managers from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

The Play's The Thing

Looking to more deeply engage her students in understanding the varying environmental issues surrounding the flying squirrel and its habitat, Semlick decided to have the students create a play to communicate the importance of protecting the environment.  Students worked in teams to evaluate the research they had collected, and over a period of several weeks wrote the script, created costumes and masks for the animals and rehearsed their parts over and over again before arranging their performance at local elementary schools that feed the Marshall Campus.

Their performances went off flawlessly, and afterwards the students gathered back in the classroom to reflect on their experience and the project.   “I learned so much about the animals and the environment doing the play that I didn’t know before,” said Dennis, a junior who played the menacing woodpecker. “I really liked the hands-on stuff.”

Cody, the angry spotted owl, nodded in agreement.  “Yeah, it was really pretty cool. I learned more about the spotted owl while making his costume.”

“I can see how different people have different ways of looking at the environment,” said Lilya, the lady lumber jack. “The issues facing our environment are more complicated than I thought and I didn’t really get it until I started learning my lines for the lumber jack and hearing their perspective.”

“If we don’t protect nature we’re going to lose it,” added Cody.

Luis, our super hero - flying squirrel, seemed to summarize best the feelings of the students when he concluded, “I think we worked harder on this project than we have for any other class this year, and we learned a lot about the environment. And it was the most fun I’ve had in class all year too.”

Thanks in part to the small school environment; Jill Semlick knew the strengths of her individual students well.  She recognized she needed to do something different with them, and used a wonderfully creative approach to engage them in learning science.

“It was great to see the students catch on to the ecological issues we presented in the project,” said Semlick.  “I know creating and performing the play allowed them to understand the material in a deeper way than they would have if we had just collected the data and written the report.  It worked for them.”

Knowing students well and using innovative teaching practices to help them achieve in challenging classes are some of the cornerstones of the small schools initiative.  But, of course, the real super heroes are the committed teachers, like Jill Semlick, who are helping reinvent high schools in Oregon with the fearless commitment to see all students succeed in school and life.

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