The living classrooms idea - using trees for teaching math, history and ecology to high-school students - Programs

American Forests, March-April, 1994 by Michael Nyenhuis

Trees can turn kids on, and once you've got their attention, you can teach just about anything. Here's a way to get the whole package.

To study only the plain, bare facts of a subject is to have far too narrow a view. Take a tree, for example: The roots, trunk, branches, and leaves teach obvious lessons about biology. But there's more. Trees teach lessons of ecology and history.

Even math. Trees have become one of the tools Wendy Rossoll uses to teach mathematics to junior-high-school students in Mentor, Ohio. Math, however, was not her intention when she, a colleague, and their students planted a grove of Famous & Historic trees at their suburban Cleveland school in 1990. The grove is one of about 500 planted with trees from AMERICAN FORESTS' Famous & Historic Trees program. Trees are grown from cuttings or seeds of trees connected to important historical figures, places, or events.

The grove at Ridge Junior High, funded by corporate sponsors, was planted as part of an ecology project that also included a schoolwide recycling program. Rossoll encouraged other teachers to take advantage of the grove to teach science and history.

But that left her in a quandary. The grove, after all, was a project of the math department, and she wanted to use the trees too. It wasn't long before math students were in the grove armed with clipboards, pencils, measuring tape, and formulas.

"We use the trees to do a lot of work with area, perimeter, and volume," Rossoll says. "We have the kids determine the volume of the mulch and fertilizer we need. They keep statistics about the trees' growth."

The trees have made some difficult math concepts easier to grasp, says Rossoll's colleague, math teacher Nes Janiak. "They make things relevant to the kids," he says, "and the kids are enthusiastic about it." And once you get students personally involved, Janiak adds, "You can teach pretty much anything."

The Famous & Historic Trees program was designed to link ecology and history. Each tree bought from AMERICAN FORESTS comes with a written history explaining its link to famous people, places, or events.

The program wasn't designed specifically for use by teachers, though most of the 500 groves have been planted at schools. So AMERICAN FORESTS has unveiled a new program targeted directly at schools. It's called Living Classrooms. The program uses trees as a focal point to teach students science, literature, geography, sociology, art, music, and history.

The Famous & Historic Trees are grouped into a number of categories--Civil War, Black History, Artists, and American Revolution among them. Teachers can select a Living Classroom to bring history and science lessons to life as students plan, plant, and care for their grove. Teachers can plant a George Washington tree while studying about the nation's birth, or use the planting of a Martin Luther King Jr. tree during Black History Week as they teach about the grassroots struggle for civil rights. Writers, military heroes, Olympic athletes, and philanthropists will become familiar figures who "come to life" as their trees are nurtured.

The Living Classroom kit consists of:

* 20 Famous & Historic Trees, along with a complete planting kit and planting instructions for each tree and a certificate suitable for framing that tells the tree's history.

* Two more Famous & Historic Trees, chosen by the teacher, for each year of the three-year membership.

* A Famous & Historic Trees Learning Guide, plus a "Treestory" for each selected. Each Treestory outlines the history associated with that particular tree, and gives complete information about the species and ideas for learning activities.

* 30 copies of Growing Greener Cities, AMERICAN FORESTS' popular community tree-planting manual, along with the accompanying Environmental Education Guide and video.

* The 82-page workbook World Forests: Striking a Balance Between Conservation and Development. The workbook teaches about international forests and the decisions that balance conservation with development in your community and worldwide.

* The National Register of Big Trees, a 48-page color magazine that lists and details the largest known of 799 native and naturalized species in this country, as well as a Big Tree Calendar and a video that shows teachers and students how to measure and nominate potential champions.

* 30 bookmarks from Global ReLeaf, AMERICAN FORESTS' international tree-planting and care program.

* Plus, a three-year AMERICAN FORESTS membership, including subscriptions to its two magazines, American Forests, a 64-page, four-color bimonthly, and Urban Forests, a 24-page, two-color bimonthly.

Each Living Classroom kit costs $1,500, and AMERICAN FORESTS can provide teachers with information on finding corporate sponsors for their project.

"We put the whole program together because we knew it would capture people's imaginations--teachers as well as students," says Rick Crouse, vice president for development at AMERICAN FORESTS.

The groves have already captured imaginations in Mentor, Ohio, and elsewhere.