| Summary: | A Simple Question looks at an innovative program that brings together students of all ages, their teachers, community groups and local land-owners to undertake habitat restoration and preserve endangered species. STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) is a national model for involving students in hands-on, place-based environmental education. The film documents the modest beginnings of the program, how it works, and the impact it has on the students and the habitat they work to restore. When California teacher Laurette Rogers showed a video on endangered species to her 4th grade class in the 1990's, one student plaintively asked what his class could do to help prevent species extinction. That simple question launched Rogers and her class on an inspired voyage of discovery and transformation. The students decided they would help to save the obscure, endangered California freshwater shrimp. The effort to save the shrimp became the classroom theme that inspired their cross-disciplinary learning for an entire year. The class divided into teams to learn all that they could -- conducting research, interviewing experts, creating databases, calling legislators, and presenting their findings in public forums and a legislative hearing.
|
|---|