Outdoor School's surprise: Sunshine

Dawson Smith from Powder Valley School finds the only inchworm caught in his group’s session of insect studies. The class was taught by Janice Cowan, Oregon State University Extension agent for Baker County. Students’ catches included grasshoppers, spiders and dragonflies.

By CHRIS COLLINS
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Janice Cowan brought a sun hat to Phillips Park for Outdoor School this week.

“I’ve never had to bring my hat before,” she said while encouraging sixth-graders to search the field for insects Tuesday morning.

 Usually, Cowan brings rain gear to her annual sessions while helping students gain a deeper appreciation for the bugs in their lives.

A sun hat was more appropriate this year under the clear blue skies and temperatures that have reached into the 70s and 80s.

The difference is the result of a change in scheduling.

For the past 18 years, sixth-graders have spent the waning days of their school year at Outdoor School in late May and early June at the private park 10 miles northwest of Baker City.

This year, organizers instead sought to take advantage of the warm Indian summer that’s typical in Baker Valley during September.

“It’s dry, the weather is warm and it’s wonderful,” Cowan said.

The students also enjoyed the warm weather as they swooped their nets through a stubble field collecting grasshoppers, caterpillars, flies and other insects in jars before returning to Cowan to consider what they’d collected.

One by one, students dumped their jars on a tarp and the group watched as the insects hopped, crawled and flew away while Cowan pointed out the different types of grasshoppers — including some that were actually crickets.

She also explained how caterpillars slink along while inchworms must bring their front and back ends together before extending themselves to move across a surface because they have no legs in the middle of their bodies.

Cowan is an Oregon State University Extension agent who offers her knowledge and skills along with other scientists and specialists from agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Baker County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue Team. Teachers and natural resource experts who have retired from their jobs also volunteer their expertise for the annual event.

Dorothy Mason is one of those retired workers who has turned her talents to the program’s logistics side. Mason retired in January from her job as the Bureau of Land Management’s endangered species coordinator.

The very next day she began working on this fall’s Outdoor School program, she said.

Mason is a former instructor for the program. This is her second session in the role of coordinator.

On Tuesday, she recalled her visit with a newspaper reporter and a photographer on a cold and soggy June 1 during the program’s most recent session last spring.

“People were cold that day,” she said. “That’s the day we said, ‘we’re switching to fall.’ ”

And there have been no regrets.

“The weather is exquisite,” Mason said. “Another improvement is the attitude of everyone being better because of the weather being better.”

This year’s program also was expanded to include students from school districts at Huntington, Burnt River and North Powder. Pine-Eagle students were invited, but did not attend.

Thanks to an $8,300 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation’s Gray Family Fund for Environmental Education Programs, the Baker School District was able to pay for the cost of transporting those students from the outlying districts. There are 115 South Baker sixth-graders and 14 from Haines attending Outdoor School along with 30 from North Powder, eight from Huntington and three from Burnt River.

The grant money also was used to provide new awnings for the presentation sites and lunch-time canopies for students to dine under.

Jessica Wickert, the district’s food services manager, with assistance from Tammy Henderson, served lunches daily to the group.

Betty Palmer, South Baker principal, who assisted Mason in writing the grant, is the district’s lead contact for the program. She said the grant funding was especially helpful to accommodate the move to the fall session.

“The South Baker PTO (Parent-Teacher Organization) had just done it in May and June,” she said, and would have been hard strapped to turn around and fund a fall session.

The parent groups have helped fund Outdoor School since 2002 when the district cut the program from its budget.What started out as a five-day program was reduced to three days because of funding reductions and has since been reinstated as a four-day outdoor learning experience for students.

The sixth-graders arrived at the park at 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday this week. They rotated through 15 classes Monday through Wednesday on these topics: forestry, soils, watershed, fire, leave no trace camping, wildlife habitat, living pond, noxious weeds, fire ecology, survival, camping, insects, geology, wildlife and orienteering.

Although electives were reintroduced to the program last spring, they were offered all on one day this fall instead of being spread throughout the week.

On Thursday, students were given a choice of taking four of the 12 electives offered. Classes ranged from outdoor games to building bird boxes and a scavenger hunt.

The schedule ended at 2:35 p.m. each day.