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Environmental science students and the Help Our Planet Earth Club at Appleton North High School just planted $1,500 worth of tulip bulbs, shrubs and trees in and around "The North Prairie."
"We just keep adding to it," teacher Connie Roop says of the project. It began while the school was still under construction and a tall grass prairie, the most endangered ecosystem in the Midwest, as the centerpiece.
Last spring, Legacy Park was dedicated in Menasha, next door to Butte des Morts Elementary School.
Menasha High School teacher Bill Sepnafski and his students spearheaded it, creating not only a park but a nature center and reading corner for BDM pupils, a place to plant trees and flowers in memory of deceased teachers and other community VIPs.
Community luncheons have been held there and last weekend, it hosted a wedding.
Neenah High School's art teachers want a different kind of outdoor classroom. They hope to transform the courtyard outside their new classrooms into Monet's garden, where students can sketch, throw pots, paint and sculpt.
Sugar Bush Elementary School in the New London school district has developed an outdoor classroom with a dozen stations devoted to everything from forestry and prairie to geography and geology.
Throughout the Fox Valley, outdoor classrooms, nature centers, arboretums and prairies are springing up around schools.
"It's a trend that has probably blossomed over the last six years," says Jim Anderson, naturalist at Mosquito Hill Nature Center near New London.
"Back in the 1970s, when places like Mosquito Hill and Bubolz (Nature Center) were in their infancy, we didn't see this development going on in the schools, so it was necessary for us to provide patches of old field and patches of forest."
Anderson believes the awareness of environmental education in recent years is driving the desire to liven up the traditionally sterile landscapes around schools.
Students are asking for it and many teachers can remember going to environmental centers and having wonderful experiences in woodlots, prairies and garden plots, he says.
Randy Korb, of Biophilia in Menasha, sells butterfly gardens to schools all over the country, including Johnston in Appleton and Clayton in Neenah. He also teaches workshops on how to build frog ponds and other water features designed to attract more amphibians to urban areas.
Korb is looking for model schools in the Fox Valley to pilot a butterfly garden project, including workshops for teachers, and is seeking grants and corporate funding.
"From there we have to encourage parents and neighbors around the school to do the same thing in their yards," he said.
Like Anderson, Korb thinks schools declined into "biological deserts" before this trend began. "They weren't teaching children about their world. They were teaching that the world is a dull place."
Interest by educators in outdoor classrooms has grown significantly, he says, because "They all know they have to do it. It's more than aesthetics. It's a tremendous resource we can't do without."
"It's amazing what you can do with two acres around a school," he says of the plants and wildlife a well planned nature area can sustain. "It will energize the school and whole community."
Appleton North's expanding outdoor classroom includes native grasses and plants, a butterfly garden, deciduous and pine trees. Technical education students built a circle of benches on which to enjoy it.
The next step is birdfeeders, says Roop, who envisions many classes other than science using this learning center.
She has seen the ripple effect just this year following a Mielke Summer Institute on the environment at Lawrence University. Several teachers who participated are now developing outdoor learning centers.
Convenience is a factor, she notes. "It's expensive and complicated to take students elsewhere and we can teach our students so much in our own backyard."
The arboretum at Appleton's Janet Berry Elementary School includes a butterfly garden, bird garden, windbreak, prairie and life cycle garden. It has allowed the school to cut back on day-long field trips to nature centers.
"Nature centers are wonderful but now we can just go outside our door and there it is," said principal Dave Hash.
Hash says the center is used for everything from counting birds and charting the change in seasons to collecting ideas for journal writing.
"The kids are really taking ownership," says Hash. Today they are doing their pre-winter arboretum cleanup.
Projects like "The North Prairie" also encourage stewardship of the environment in students, says Roop.
"I want kids to think about the personal impact they have on the environment," she said.
Posted November 6, 1996