Coe Connections is one of the very popular public programs
offered by the volunteers at Henry W. Coe State Park. It offers
students from grades 1-6 the opportunity to get hands-on
experiences with nature in the out-of-doors, while exposing them to
the concept that all living things are connected to each other. The
Coe Connections program typically serves about 1,000 area students
each year. When a teacher brings up a class from a local school, a
park volunteer presents them with a slide show which introduces
them to the park and its wildlife season-by-season. They are then
split up into groups of 10 or so and taken on hikes into the park
by other volunteers who use this outdoor experience to reinforce
ideas presented in the slide show.
Coe Connections is one of the very popular public programs offered by the volunteers at Henry W. Coe State Park. It offers students from grades 1-6 the opportunity to get hands-on experiences with nature in the out-of-doors, while exposing them to the concept that all living things are connected to each other. The Coe Connections program typically serves about 1,000 area students each year.
When a teacher brings up a class from a local school, a park volunteer presents them with a slide show which introduces them to the park and its wildlife season-by-season. They are then split up into groups of 10 or so and taken on hikes into the park by other volunteers who use this outdoor experience to reinforce ideas presented in the slide show.
This hike may last as long as two and a half hours and cover over two miles.
The volunteers who lead these hikes have fun sharing their knowledge of the park and nature with these students and watching the students’ horizons expand as they get out of the classroom and into the “real” world. The following stories illustrate some of the experiences of fellow Coe Park volunteer Marlene Testaguzza and myself.
Bernard
He was a second grader, small and husky with enormous eyes encircled by even more enormous black-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a shirt, long pants and large tennis shoes. Slung over his back was a day pack filled with many plant and animal identification books.
He was more than ready to hike out to the acorn woodpecker tree, a long-dead, erect Ponderosa pine that was filled with carefully pecked holes, each holding a stored acorn.
There, we would eat lunch, explore, and learn about items the hike leader had in her day pack. Bernard’s classmates, from time to time, asked Bernard, who had his books readily available, questions about the birds, plants, galls, spiders, oak and pine trees etc. Bernard, in a serious manner, looked up the pertinent information.
After they’d hiked back to the Visitor Center, and as the leader we stood in front of the door of the Interpretive room, a little girl with long dark hair, put her hand gently the leader’s arm, looked up into her face, and said in a low but easily heard voice, “Bernard knows everything!”
Hugging an oak
Twenty-eight little first graders from San Jose’s inner city had come to visit. Most had never been in a park like Coe, had never hiked a trail in a park like Coe. This was their first time being with giant old trees, seeing holes in the dirt banks that belonged to tarantulas, walking through meadows of long grass.
There is a special very large old valley oak near the trail that lends itself to being hugged.
Some were hesitant to do this, so their Coe Ieader suggested that they encircle the tree with outstretched arms and count how many of them it takes to go around.
And she told them that while they’re there they may want to use the magnifiers they’d been given to see into the deep furrows of the tree’s bark where mosses and lichens live.
After they returned to the Interpretive room at the Visitor Center, their leader asked the 28 little students if anyone had ever before touched a tree. No verbal response – not one hand was raised.
Tuesday of the horizontal rain
A fifth-grade group arrived at the Henry W. Coe Visitor Center after driving the 10-mile windy mountain road from Highway 101 in the pouring-down rain and heavy winds.
Today, they wore garbage bags over their clothes, which were appropriately cut open at the neck and arms. If the plants and animals were out there in the storm, they would be, too. After the indoor part of the program was completed, they prepared to hike, in the horizontal rain, two miles or more.
They returned about two hours later, their very wet garbage bags having kept them reasonably dry.
While they were shedding their bags, there was boisterous conversation, and many smiles.
A few weeks later, the leader met a parent who mentioned that her daughter had gone on a field trip to Henry W. Coe State Park, in the pouring rain.
Her daughter had always complained when she was made to hike. But when her mother asked if she’d like to go back to the Park and hike, she said emphatically, yes!
For more information about the Coe Connections program, call 779-2356.
Bill Frazer is a Coe Park volunteer.
