An awesome twist on "Can we have class outside today?"

Remember when you were a kid in school and you'd look out the classroom window and wish you could be "out there" instead of cooped up at your desk?

So you'd plead with your teacher, "Can we please have class outside today?"

For some Lansing-area students, having class outside is a reality.

And this is what $13,781 buys you for an outdoor classroom.

That's what the Capital Region Community Foundation granted to Annie's BIG Nature Lesson, a program that immerses children, teachers and parents in the beauty and wonder of the natural world.

Started in 1999 by Michigan Teacher of the Year Margaret Holtschlag, this program is unrivaled in the experience it gives kids. For one week, a class uses community resources as its classroom — in Lansing, that's at Woldumar Nature Center, a nonprofit environmental education organization situated along the Grand River and boasting more than five miles of trails.

"Kids spend so much time tuning out," Holtschlag said. "To do their homework, they have to tune out the TV in the other room, tune out traffic, tune out other people in the family. Here, we're asking them to tune in."


My visit came on the last day of the program for 46 students from Lansing's Gier Park Elementary School. When the students arrived on Monday, Holtschlag said their teachers reported they were a chatty bunch, not all that focused on the world around them. But by Friday, hands energetically shot into the air as their teachers asked them what their favorite spots were at Woldumar.

• "The Grand River!"
• "The wetlands."
• "The beech maple forest, looking at the water and the trees."
• " 'My' tree," one student said. When his teacher asked what he liked about that particular tree, he thought for a minute and replied, "It's a friendly tree."
• "When the leaves fall off my tree, it looks like ghosts coming down," one boy observed.

These are city kids, remember. Kids who aren't prone to sitting outside and contemplating nature. And that's what they think of trees now.

How cool is that?

The students' final day was spent learning about how things and animals are connected in nature and how they interact. To illustrate the lesson, they played a game of food-chain tag, dividing into three groups: plants, herbivores and carnivores.

Next, they grabbed small camp stools and their journals and headed out on Woldumar's trails to settle in for some final observations and contemplation. Each student picked a spot at the edge of the woods alongside the Grand River, quieted down quickly and began writing about what they saw and how they felt.

One student who seemed determined to avoid the assignment (fidgeting, broken pencil, can't get comfortable) finally focused on his surroundings. Using a pen borrowed from Holtschlag, he started making notes in his journal. When it was time to head back to the nature center, he walked over to Holtschlag to return her pen and show her what he'd written.

"I watched the trees dance," he wrote.

"Wow," Holtschlag said, eyes beaming. "How special is that?"

Holtschlag's enthusiasm for what she does oozes out of every pore. She smiles easily, hugs often and is quick to praise the teachers for the work they do.

Much of the work Holtschlag does is on the front end of the program — she works with teachers and the staff at the nature center to coordinate lesson plans. "By the time the teachers get here, it's their show. They keep it running," she said. "I like to come in and visit when I can."

Some teachers, like Joni Baker and Sara Rameriez from Gier Park, are back for their fourth year with Annie's BIG Nature lesson.

"It's such a nice change of pace, especially this time of year," Rameriez said. "I said to the kids today, 'Don't you love walking down the hall at 9 a.m., seeing the other kids doing pencil-and-paper work, knowing we're going out to do something cool?' They just love it here."

"I love Up North," Baker said. "Love it. But having the lesson at Woldumar is so great because students get to have this place that they can come back to. The ones who have their grandparents nearby can bring them here and show them the sycamore tree they walked by and point it out to them, knowing what it is."

Before they leave for the week, the students are asked to complete a stewardship project, to further their connection to the environment and to Woldumar. This group's project involves spreading woodchips along a neglected path. Kids who've never used a wheelbarrow previously excitedly grab the handles and run the piles of woodchips down to the path where their classmates wait to spread them.

Art teacher Julia Naccarato said an experience such as this wouldn't be possible without grants from organizations including the Capital Region Community Foundation. "Usually I come into their classroom for an hour, then leave. Here, I get to stay with them all day and watch them learn."

Since its beginning in 2002, more than 8,700 students have participated in Annie's BIG Nature Lesson, and Holtschlag says the demand for the program continues to grow as teachers spread the word. During the 2010-11 school year, 70 teachers will participate in the lesson, with 30 of those classes at Woldumar Nature Center. Other BIG lesson sites include Kalamazoo and Battle Creek.

Annie's BIG Nature Lesson is named in honor of Ann Mason, a Clinton County environmentalist who devoted her career to taking care of the environment and educating the public about their responsibility for stewardship of the Earth. She died of cancer in 2001 and her family asked Holtschlag to design a program in her honor.