Teachers Bring Amazon Rain Forest Back to Their Classrooms

Analogies help get points across. But one that crossed a Broken Arrow teacher’s mind while studying in the Amazon Rain Forest sent waves of guilt through her body.

Liberty Elementary teacher Rebecca Garrison and her mother, Vandever Elementary instructor Karen Judkins, talked enthusiastically about their Fund For Teachers-sponsored trip to the Amazon Rain Forest in Peru this summer.

Judkins said a key memory of their two-week trek was the food, how different it was from what they’re accustomed to in Oklahoma.

“Oh, I felt so guilty when I learned I’d eaten a tree,” Garrison said through bursts of laughter. “The day after we had hearts of palm for dinner, our guide told us it takes five to 30 years for that part of the palm tree to grow back. I really felt guilty when I considered that I’m about to turn 30.”

The mother-daughter team obviously enjoyed recounting their experiences south of the equator. Both plan to tell stories of their trip many times as they integrate their new knowledge and experiences into their classroom curriculum.

“We’ll be able to use the information in every subject we teach and do projects to make learning all the more exciting for our students,” Judkins said.

“We’ve put together a folder for our students with games, story starters and many other things that will help us teach about weather, geography, social studies, plants and animals — all subjects,” Judkins said.

“I’ll do rain-forest Friday’s,” Garrison said. “We’ll focus on the rain forest, for example, while studying reading. If our lesson plan focus is the story setting, I’ll read a story about the rain forest and we’ll talk about the setting. My students will learn something about reading while studying geography, spelling and so on.”

Judkins said she and her daughter can incorporate their experiences in teaching social studies since several countries have rain forests. Those studies will take on a special significance because of relationships they built with other teachers on the Amazon trip.

“We’re going to be pen pals with teachers and their students in Seattle, Wash., and share information. I’ll have three forests in my classroom: the Amazon Rain Forest of Peru, the temperate forest of Washington and the deciduous forest around Broken Arrow,” Garrison said.

“We’ll add animals and birds native to those areas, measure rainfall and research other aspects of the three forests,” she said.

Judkins said she and Garrison will share teaching techniques through their pen pal relationships and their students will enhance their writing skills as they communicate with the Seattle students.

Before arriving in Iquitos, Peru on the Amazon River in northern Peru, the two traveled to Lima on the country’s Pacific Ocean coast where the teachers bought artifacts to spice up their classroom instruction.

Another lesson Judkins and Garrison will teach their students is helping others and learning to appreciate what they have. The teachers will adopt a school in Peru.

“It’s really a poor country,” Judkins said. “But the school kids are happy. They don’t know what they’re missing, things our students have here in Broken Arrow.”

She said a $350 donation will buy all the supplies needed for a year in the average-size school in Peru.

“Our students will learn what our adoptions mean when students in those schools send us artwork and letters,” Garrison said.

To keep their experiences alive for future Vandever and Liberty students, Judkins and Garrison are self-publishing a hard-back book for their school libraries that chronicles their trip.

It includes their experiences, thoughts and feelings they recorded in a daily journal during their trip.

Students reading the book will learn of the two teachers listening to a shaman tell how he uses rain forest roots, leaves, bark and berries to heal all types of illnesses; learning how to make a thatched roof, repair a fish net, build a canoe, and how the natives weave baskets.

“There really is a basket weaving course,” Garrison said with a chuckle.

Fund For Teachers accepts grant applications in October for next summer’s educational trips throughout the United States and the world.

The nonprofit foundation’s Web site at www.fundforteachers.org provides detailed information.

The foundation this year granted $246,867 to 42 individual teachers and 21 teams of two or more from 52 Tulsa and area schools including several in Broken Arrow and Union. Grants range up to $5,000 for an individual, $7,500 for a team.