Students learn what it takes to teach
A group of wide-eyed 8-year-olds stare intently at the lecturer standing before them, some on the edge of their seats, others with their mouths slightly open in a state of awe.
“Who knows what landfill is?” the educator, Aidan Nathanson, a freshman at Santa Monica High School, asks the young group of inquiring minds.
Instantly, a sea of hands shoot up in the air, the room filled with “ooh oohs” that come with third graders who are eager to answer a question.
For the students at John Muir Elementary School, Monday morning brought a special treat in the form of approximately 20 Samohi students from a freshman biology course who were on their campus to teach about the importance of composting. For the 20 Samohi students acting as teachers, the same morning brought them more than 100 impressionable minds, all giving the 14-15 year olds their undivided attention — the youngsters just excited to have the “big kids” around.
All are participants of the Peer Partners in Environmental Education program, which brings high schoolers together with middle and elementary school students in a teacher-pupil type relationship, instilling leadership skills and confidence in high school students and spreading the word about ecological and sustainability issues to a very young generation.
The program was developed in 1993 by Mary Edie, who in working at the Center for Environmental Education, piloted Peer Partners at Palisades High School. Edie, who has since left the center and has introduced the program in several different school districts, has worked with the Environmental Programs Division at Santa Monica City Hall for more than 10 years in operating the Peer Partners at Samohi.
Peer Partners essentially aims to teach various environmental issues to high school students who in turn create a lesson plan and relay the concepts of those issues to elementary school students. Through the program, the high schoolers gain an appreciation for teaching and the elementary school students have the benefit of learning about environmentalism at a young age, program coordinators said.
The program works with a different class at Samohi every year and Matt Mabrey’s freshmen honors biology section was selected this year, focusing on a different environmental topic each semester. The students have participated in a series of workshops since the beginning of the spring semester, learning about the topic — composting — from guest speakers and doing trial-run presentations after they finalized their lesson plans.
When Lauren Nadel and Lianna Cohen made their first presentation in the fall, they catered their lesson plan to the second-grade audience, but were surprised to learn just how knowledgeable the students were about the topic. With that experience in mind, the two freshmen decided to enhance the difficulty level of their instruction, coming back to that same second grade class on Monday.
31F,“The kids are just the same as us, they just haven’t learned as much,” Nadel said.
Perhaps the biggest challenge in running a lesson is to keep the discussion on topic as some of the elementary school students tend to go off on tangents with their questions. In one of the classes, the elementary students were learning about worm composting when several of the kids started asking questions such as how long worms live.
Such challenges have given the students a newfound respect for their teachers.
“Now when I’m in class, I recognize what the teachers do is what we’ve been taught to do, such as reading (a sentence) over and over,” Cohen said.
Mabrey, who is in his first year teaching at Samohi, said he has noticed a maturity in his students, a shot up in confidence level and dedication.
4DC,“The kids put in a lot of hours and I can tell they own the presentations and put in the maximum and not just the minimum,” Mabrey said. “The enthusiasm that I see is something that I can’t teach.”
The enthusiasm extends to the pupils in the program.
Lori Hanson, who teaches the third grade, said her students were excited when they were told that a group of high school students would be paying them a visit that morning. It is because of that enthusiasm that Hanson believes the elementary school students are grasping the lesson.
“You can see how closely they’re paying attention,” Hanson said, pointing to some kids who couldn’t seem to take their eyes off the Samohi students.
City Hall’s participation in the $5,000 program, is part of its goals to educate the public about environmental issues, according to Andrew Basmajian, the environmental outreach coordinator for City Hall.
“It’s a function of our public mandate to inform the public and kids just have to be a part of that equation,” Basmajian said.
Jump hedline: Samohi kids learn what it takes to teach
Suggested pullquote: “The enthusiasm that I see is something that I can’t teach.”
Matt Mabrey
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 11, 2008. Read the original PDF.