Candace Leuthold's recent lesson on invasive species didn't just make her freshman biology students excited to learn.
It turned them into a feeding frenzy.
After every lesson, the Early College High School teacher of 16 years gives her students a corresponding activity. During the ecology lesson, students were given different eating utensils – think of them as mouths, Leuthold told her students.
They used the utensils to pick up multicolored felt pompoms, symbolizing resources available to animals in the wild.
Then she added a second group of students as an invasive species. These students could scoop up pompoms with their fingers – an enormous advantage.
“I can't wait to starve you guys into extinction,” one freshman told her partners, hungrily eyeing the pompoms before her.
At Leuthold's cue, the otherwise timid freshmen turned into ravenous packs, screaming, howling and yelping over the quickly disappearing pile. No pompom was spared. Even those that fell beneath tables were hurriedly scrounged up, mostly by the invasive species.
Explaining the effect
At the end of the game, Leuthold sat quietly before her students, waiting for them to digest the analogy. She encourages her students to approach their material scientifically: to ask questions, to be wrong, to try again and to come to a conclusion.
She caught one student looking especially dejected after losing the game. She asked him how he felt when the invasive species began stealing his resources. It felt bad, he admitted.
“I just wanted to give up,” another student chimed in.
The emotional response provided an opportunity to bring the lesson home. Invasive species like the black mustard plant and the pampas grass that grow around Upper Newport Bay make it difficult for native species to thrive because they use up all the resources for those plants, Leuthold explained to the students.
“This is why we're going to remove them,” she said.
Starting in 2006, students in Leuthold's biology class have been removing invasive plants and replacing them with natives in the Upper Newport Bay. The students visit the site throughout the school year and work with the California Coastal Commission and the county. The aim is to restore the habitat so animals such as the endangered light-footed clapper rail can continue to breed in native marsh grasses.
Since Leuthold started the project, the students have restored two acres of the bay and seen a marked increase in biodiversity in the plant and animal communities. It's one way she's showing them the impact their education can have on the environment.
“School isn't always fun, but they get out there in the bay and dig a little bit and plant something,” Leuthold said. “Eventually, they see they're making an impact.”
Nurturing a love for nature
Though Leuthold never planned to be a teacher, she always had an appreciation for the nature she teaches her students to preserve. She also sees it as one of the most effective textbooks available.
Growing up on a dairy farm on the Oregon coast, she spent her summers packaging cheese and her winters driving up to the mountains with her dad to look for elk. When she wasn't in school, she was outside, looking under rocks to see the bugs living there.
In high school, Leuthold's biology teacher took students on weeklong camping trips and other outdoor excursions. She saw that learning didn't have to be abstract. She said that idea drives her to take her students out of the classroom, too.
“That's the best thing as a teacher, when you see a kid struggle and struggle and you push them through and they get it,” she said. “When you're actually showing them how the material is applicable, it's easier for them to make those connections.”
Environment as a classroom
Between visits to the bay, Leuthold also assigns each of her freshmen a local environmental issue to research and present to the public. The students look into problems like storm water runoff in the bay or shark finning.
This summer, Leuthold is taking 10 of her AP biology students to South Africa on a global sustainability project. The students will help researchers with the Earthwatch Institute collect and compile data on animal populations.
Leuthold said she's trying to show her students that they can affect a community with what they're learning in school, but they have to take the initiative themselves.
“It's easy for them to sit back and assume ‘someone' is going to take care of things, but for them to be actively involved, they can see that they are that ‘someone.'”
Contact the writer: 714-796-2227 or email@example.com
- Summer 2016: 50 free things to do in Orange County this summer
- Former 'Glee' star Mark Salling indicted on child-porn charges
- How to claim a beach fire pit: Etiquette, rules, and secrets from an expert
- Cocaine shipment intercepted by agents at Orange County border
- Knott's Berry Farm gets new boss, a former Disneyland executive
- Classroom Hero: Students free to speak, learn
- Classroom Heroes: Teacher forges individual connections
- Classroom Hero: A path to empowerment
- Classroom Hero: Hands-on labs motivate students
- Classroom Hero: Teacher speaks their language
- Classroom Hero: He makes science fun
- Classroom Hero: Showing the way to learning