Drew Dumsch, Director of Ferry Beach Ecology School (FBES) in Saco, says he would hate to see a student spend time at the school, then go home and announce, “Well, it was great being at the beach,” and never apply any of the lessons learned about ecology and sustainable living to his or her own life — at home, in school, or on vacation.
“I’d hope they would take what they’d learned wherever they went,” he says, “so that if they visit Canyonlands or the Everglades, they would be `Reading the Landscape’ in the way we taught them here and seeing their connection to that landscape.”
Tina Pagano, fifth-grader Larry Pagano’s mother, says her son, who has attended FBES several times during the fourth and fifth grade with his classmates at C.K. Burns School in Saco, has been doing exactly what Dumsch hopes for. “After being at FBES, he started to take our home recycling very seriously,” she says, “and if we take a walk, he’s the one who pulls his friends back onto the path if they stray off it, and makes sure no one goes on the dunes. The school has made him aware that he has an impact. It’s taken him beyond his little world.”
The FBES mission is to stamp out illiteracy, environmental illiteracy, that is, and create junior ecologists who will be stewards of the environment. Over the past six years, using a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates oceanography, geology, biology, chemistry, climatology and history, the school has taught over 30,000 Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont students, grades three through eight, about the ecology of eight different ecological systems that are within walking distance of the school. The students progress beyond merely identifying plants, animals and different types of terrain to learn about interrelationships, things like how the amount of nutrients in the soil, the amount of disturbance such as wind, temperature and tidal changes affect the plant and animal diversity of an area. Teachers help students become aware of differences between diversity in a forest and diversity on a beach. They help them understand not only the forces of the present scene, but also historical forces, like the movement of glaciers, that have created changes in the earth over millions of years.
And then, they go a step further to help them recognize how human behavior affects these interrelationships. If we pollute the air or water, the balance is upset; when we cut down trees in the forest, the salt marsh is affected. As Steve Signell, who started the school with Dumsch, explains, “When students see themselves as players in this grand story of the landscape, it makes it easier for them to realize the effects their actions have on the other characters in the story — the organisms, waters, rocks and air. Humans that better understand their connection to the land, seas and skies make better stewards of the Earth.”
At FBES, the message is always visible: connections and interrelationships in the environment. In the dining hall, each meal has a sponsor like the sun, farmers, or decomposers like fungi. The sponsor’s role is explained in a poster, and over the course of 13 meals, 13 interlocking roles are explained which all contribute to getting food from seed to the plate. On the doors in bathrooms, signs answer the question, “Where does our wastewater go?” Recycling is evident everywhere, and students eat from and work in an organic garden.
The current star of FBES’s practicing-what-they-preach is the Green Office, a sustainably built and run FBES office built in partnership with the Ferry Beach Park Association, which owns the buildings FBES rents spring and fall, and with the sponsorship of many local businesses and organizations.
Dumsch says the Green Office is a final stop for students after learning about connections and interrelationships — a place where they can see the concepts they have learned about ecology and practicing sustainable energy in action. Highlights of the sustainable building include Blue Link solar power, Correct Deck recycled plastic porch decking, energy efficient fluorescent lighting, an Italian high efficiency boiler that heats water for baseboard heating and an oak conference table built from trees cut at the site and milled locally.
Dumsch and Signell started FBES in 1999. Both had previously worked at the Environmental School at the same location before it closed. From the beginning, they explained their mission in terms of learning to “Read the Landscape,” a phrase coined by May Watts and further amplified by Tom Wessels, a professor of ecology at the Antioch New England Graduate School, who wrote “Reading the Forested Landscape.” They created a trademarked way of teaching students to Read the Landscape — to use the “ABC’s of ecology.” This approach, they say, provides an easy way to categorize all ecosystems and make comparisons and contrasts among them. The A stands for abiotic, or non-living factors such as wind and temperature, and B, biotic, or living factors, which include producers like trees, consumers such as birds and mammals and decomposers like different types of fungi. The C’s are cycles as in tides that bring in nutrients and change such as global warming.
Signell, who was trained as a field ecologist (he left FBES after two and one half years to complete his master’s degree) brought his knowledge of environmental science to the venture. Dumsch, who has a BA and MA in English and has used communication skills and drama in environmental education for several years, sparked their curriculum by incorporating improvisation and drama into presentations.
FBES naturalists will resort to just about any dramatic technique to get the message across. These energetic young people, who are usually between a college degree and job or pursuing an advanced degree in ecology or a related area, or wear outlandish wigs and costumes in skits and improvisations, have the students conduct short experiments which use simple materials like plastic bags and straws to measure carbon dioxide, or wear pizza chefs’ hats while creating imaginary pizza demonstrating the difference between diversity and productivity. “The students remember these lessons,” says Linda Lambert, Larry Pagano’s teacher, whose fourth and fifth graders from C.K. Burns have attended FBES for several years. “They always love the plays.”
Lambert, whose curriculum includes the study of ecology, says she appreciates the time FBES has spent developing educational programs that meet Maine State Learning results, and that the school gives teachers certain things to cover before they visit the facility. “We try to mirror what we are going to do and make sure our students are familiar with the vocabulary and expressions they will be using, things like “Reading the Landscape,” she explains.
Lambert has observed that her students, who live amid marshes and estuaries next to the ocean, aren’t really aware of their natural surroundings. “What we would think kids would know, they don’t,” she says. “You’d think they would be aware of tidal pools, estuaries and marshes, but they are not. When we go to FBES, we bring back knowledge we can build on.”
At FBES, students take part in four or five-day residential programs in the fall or spring, or one-day field trips in fall, winter and spring. FBES takes programs into schools whenever their schedules permit. It also organizes numerous other activities such as workshops for educator conferences, an annual Spring Canoe-a-Thon and Clean up of the Saco River and a community Halloween event, the “Enchanted Forest.” It has published The Ferry Beach Field Guide: An Ecological Tour of Maine’s Coastal Ecosystem.
FBES helps schools figure out different ways to fund student visits. Dumsch is currently applying for grants that he hopes will establish a fund to support Maine student participation.
Lambert says C.K.Burns plans to continue to take fourth- (two visits, fall and spring) and fifth-graders (three visits, including winter) to FBES. “Even children who might not be thrilled to sit in a classroom come alive and enjoy when we take them outdoors at FBES,” she says. “They have their favorite part and always want to do that again. They didn’t even whine in the winter when it was so cold.”
To learn more about FBES programs, ecology and sustainable living, visit www.fbes.org.