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http://www.omniture.com --> Email Story to a Friend June 14, 2006 Walker Elementary School students walk to classes surrounded by flowers and vegetation under a large sunflower sculpture that doubles as a bird feeder in the extensive natural area in front of the school. Walker�s approach to nature-and-art-based learning has grown into the John Muir School, which will open in the fall. (Mail Tribune / Denise Baratta) 'John Muir' in Ashland By John Darling for the Mail Tribune ASHLAND — In a move to create a K-8 school under one roof — and free up space in crowded elementary classrooms — a new nature-and-art-based "John Muir School" will open this fall at Ashland Middle School. The outdoor-oriented program, which integrates and approaches all subjects through nature and art, has since the 1990s been operating in first through fifth grades at Walker Elementary School as the Continuous Learning Community. It is responsible for the flora and fauna abounding on the school's west side. The Walker students take frequent field trips, spend every Friday in Lithia Park, go on three-day jaunts to live in yurts and study tidal pools at the coast and, over the last year, have uncovered Paradise Creek, which was buried in culverts in front of Walker School when it was built 55 years ago. "The kids dug this streambed with their own hands over two years and planted all the big leaf maples, which they keep in their own names and pass along to a younger kid when they reach third grade," says Walker teacher Tim Brandy, who will be one of three John Muir teachers. This fall, 75 Walker children and 15 middle school kids will attend the John Muir School in an AMS wing segregated from the rest of the middle school kids. Students will be grouped in ages K-2, 3-4, 5-6 and 7-8. It's named for famed 19th century California naturalist and preservationist John Muir. The first John Muir students this fall will plan their U-shaped courtyard and its flora, cob mud and straw wall and separate entrance for the school. Organizers hope it will become a magnet school, attracting students from the other three elementary schools and the middle school. The 75 grade-schoolers were chosen from 150 applicants. In its second year, the school will add a fourth teacher and increase to 100 elementary students. John Muir students next year plan to reestablish habitats in wetlands on the north part of AMS, culling invasive species and using native plants from a "shade house" used to grow shade-loving plants at ScienceWorks across the street, says Pat Scalo, a Walker teacher who will teach at Muir. The restoration will allow the return of native wildlife — redwing blackbird, Canada goose, many butterfly species — to that wetlands, she added. The students will study habitats in the Ashland watershed and plan to take on stewardship tasks, planting 50 trees in barren public places around Ashland, she adds. The trees will be donated by Don Bish of Plant Oregon in Talent. The Muir program emerged following closure of Briscoe and Lincoln elementary schools, when a task force of teachers and parents explored ways to make the best use of remaining space and create some form of K-8 school while using existing teachers, says Ashland School Superintendent Juli Di Chiro. "The Walker team Brandy and Scalo came forward and fulfilled the dream. It was a great marriage," said Di Chiro. "It allows us to focus on the emerging needs of adolescents and know them over a longer period of time." The new John Muir School relieves crowding at Walker, allowing it to drop from 380 students to 300 — the same level as Helman and Bellevue elementary schools, she says. The nature-art school was created, she says, because younger children "don't learn well in segments, but like the integrated, connected way — and it still responds to all the state standards." While outside erecting a bird-feeder sculpture, the Walker School kids readily agreed. "You still learn just as much or more, but you're outside having fun, too," said fifth-grader Emma Frantz. "Sometimes learning should be fun. It's better than being inside looking in a book," said Bruce Rogan, whose great-grandmother named Paradise Creek decades ago when she built her home near its headwaters. "Children learn more thoroughly and hold concepts longer if they have the experience first, then study it in a book," said Brandy. Added Scalo: "With math, history and such subjects, we teach a rigorous academic program, but the way we deliver it looks different than the traditional way. We have fun, but it's not fun and you don't learn unless you are challenged, using multiple intelligences and take it in through all your senses and your own experience." John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected]. Advertisement s Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Discount Hotel Reservations --> online casinos news Ashley Furniture HomeStore Send Flowers California Casinos GMAT Prep Windermere Van Vleet Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Entertainment Guide --> Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada Online Pharmacy