 |
Harding Middle School eighth grader Darryn Brooks and his peers used binoculars to see if they could find various animals and plants during the opening session of Great Ape Academy. |
|
Des Moines middle school students are gaining new respect for science
Des Moines, Iowa – September 27, 2007 – Darryn Brooks, an eighth grader at Harding Middle School, said he “might actually want to be a scientist some day” after he and two dozen other Des Moines middle school students got a glimpse at the scientific research at Great Ape Trust of Iowa during the first session of Great Ape Academy on Sept. 20.
Great Ape Academy is an interdisciplinary education program in its pilot year with Des Moines Public Schools. The only public education program of its kind in the world, The Academy is the first phase of multi-faceted educational programming to help Great Ape Trust fulfill its mission to provide sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, study their intelligence, advance their conservation and provide unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust hopes to eventually offer a similar curriculum to K-12 students in other Iowa school districts. When fully developed, The Trust’s education program will include learning opportunities through post-graduate study.
By the end of October, some 300 students from Des Moines Public Schools’ 13 middle schools and middle school programs will have taken part in a program that district Superintendent Nancy Sebring says gives students an opportunity to look over the shoulders of world-renowned scientists. Most schools will send 27 to 29 students for a single session, but Harding, Goodrell and McCombs middle schools each are sending three groups of eight or nine students to three sessions. This is an example of the entrepreneurial approaches different teachers in Iowa’s largest school district are taking to Great Ape Academy.
Before coming to Great Ape Trust for a morning of learning, Darryn Brooks and Mark Schnurstein’s other students at Harding wrote research papers to be presented orally to their classmates, regardless of whether they are making physical visits to The Trust’s 230-acre campus in southeast Des Moines. It was the eighth graders’ first experience with such an assignment, giving them lessons in scientific inquiry, writing, public speaking and other more subtle topics. For example, when a class of about a dozen students began discussing ethical considerations surrounding the decline of great apes in the wild and how best to manage great ape populations in captivity, they also learned lessons in civility and how to disagree respectfully, Schnurstein said.
McCombs teacher Debra Victor said she’s excited about the opportunities Great Ape Academy provides for her to teach students about compassion. Such applications aren’t always easy to find and the teaching can become rote, she said, but Great Ape Trust’s scientific research with its resident bonobos and orangutans provides an excellent opportunity to teach the subject area.
Indeed, Goodrell eighth grader Kaylee Putzier said she was sure to tell her friends how impressed she was by the interaction between the apes and their human caretakers and the emotion the apes displayed. “I saw that they really have feelings about everyone else,” she said. “You can see the love that they have.”
Kaylee is an eager and engaged science student, but was surprised to learn of the myriad opportunities science offers beyond those dealing with beakers and chemical equations. “I thought science would be working with chemicals, but it’s also working with animals and seeing how they interact,” she said. “I could see myself doing something like this one day.”
Another student, McCombs eighth grader Rick Ramierz, came away from his visit appreciating Great Ape Trust of Iowa as an important scientific and educational resource for the state. Though he has long had an interest in protecting great apes and their habitat, his experiences with Great Ape Academy “will change the way I look at great apes,” he said. “I will have more respect for them being a lot smarter than I thought.”
A new appreciation for the far-reaching field of science is the primary value Great Ape Trust officials hope students will take away from their experience. In Iowa and nationally, educators and business leaders fear the country will fall behind in producing graduates in the STEM subject areas (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), threatening U.S. competitiveness.
Harding’s Schnurstein said students in his class were initially dubious that great apes can acquire language in much the same way as human children. “They saw videos and we discussed it, but as the day went along, the skepticism slowly dwindled and it was a very life-changing experience,” he said. “In terms of science literacy, it’s an unforgettable experience for the students and will have an impact on them.”
In addition to its potential to make science relevant and real for students, Great Ape Academy is important educationally for other reasons as well. Goodrell teacher Eric Galvin said the work at Great Ape Trust makes the world smaller for his students and shows that Des Moines and Iowa are contributing to knowledge on a world stage.
“Society is more global,” he said. “This is a way to bring part of it right here to Iowa, giving them a look beyond the cornfields and a chance to experience primates that are awfully close to us and think beyond themselves.”
Victor, the McCombs teacher, said The Academy addresses another nagging problem: how to keep students engaged in learning “More and more, we have students who are not interested in their education,” she said. “This is a real-life opportunity, a chance to learn about something that’s not in a textbook.”
Regardless of how students apply what they learned at Great Ape Trust, The Academy is providing them with experiences they won’t soon forget, teachers said.
“The word is going to spread as soon as we head back to school,” Galvin predicted. “They are so excited, and it will make it to the dinner table tonight and parents will become interested and want to know more.”
“In the vans on the way home, they will not be able to stop talking,” Schnurstein agreed. “They will relate their observations, write about it and talk about it for weeks.”
Jan Drees, director of Great Ape Trust’s K-12 education program, was impressed by how eager the students were to learn more about great apes and related issues.
“I expected them to be engaged, but they were seriously interested – far more than in a field trip,” Drees said. “They were seriously interested in finding answers to their questions.”
The scene on opening day of Great Ape Academy will be repeated a dozen more times before the program ends for the 2007-2008 school year in late October. Students came armed with dozens of questions piqued by their scientific inquiry. Some examples: Do orangutans like climbing trees? (Yes, they are the most arboreal of all the great apes.) Who is the leader of the bonobos? (Kanzi is a “rock star” in the bonobo world, but his adopted mother, Matata, is the undisputed leader of this matriarchal society, a key difference between bonobos and other great ape species.) What is the purpose of orangutans? (Caretaker Peter Clay volleyed the question back to the students. “What is the purpose of a human being?” he asked.)
During formal presentations by ape caretakers, students collected data, recording the ways the apes move and habits unique to individual apes. Some students sketched their surroundings. They shared binoculars, looking for bonobos in their outside play yard and wildlife on The Trust’s 230-acre heavily wooded campus. One, Goodrell eighth grader Talon Robbins, expressed his thoughts in verse:
Untitled
Curious, curious of what lies outside their gates.
Curious but not miserable
Content, in the life of the facility.
Adapted to life in the setting of Great Ape Trust.
The notorious relaxed climbing,
Though they have an audience
They go on through their day normally.
But as they go on, we go on, not unnoticed
Trademarked attention – exchanged between us.
The patient staring of them, to us.
Our interested returned glances.
The respected space given to each other,
The remarkable intellectual, social, communication, interactional understanding
Between each other.
Always growing, always learning, constantly adapting.
Thus,
Great Ape life,
Of a Primate.
Great Ape Trust Background
Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in southeast Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence. When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.
Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes. Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). To learn more about Great Ape Trust of Iowa, go to www.GreatApeTrust.org. |
Great Ape Trust is certified by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums
