Rumbling down a startlingly lush stretch of Oslo Road as it descends toward the Indian River Lagoon, a school bus shuttles a dozen fifth-graders, fresh out of school.
Behind the wheel is marine biologist and nature guide Kristin Beck. For the next two hours, the children are her charges as they settle in and study the densely wooded acre of the Audubon House, headquarters of the Pelican Island Audubon Society.
The children are all students with promise whose families live with economic challenges. They have been chosen to become Audubon Advocates, a title dreamed up by the Audubon group. One afternoon a week for the semester-long program, along with several Saturdays, they will pull on old sneakers or strap into life preservers to trek, kayak and sometimes just sit silently and observe.
Often the program includes a component called Art Outside, where students draw, paint or write in the woods or along the lagoon. For some, it is the first time they have experienced the natural beauty that is one of Vero’s most celebrated assets, but that often eludes its underprivileged children.
The Audubon Advocates program was the brainchild of Bonnie Swanson, a former elementary school principal. Swanson single-handedly set in motion an astonishing movement conceived of by her Sebastian schoolchildren to preserve acres of land for the endangered scrub jay. Now on the board of the local Audubon organization, Swanson worked with that group’s president, entomologist Dr. Richard Baker and others to create the Advocates program.
“It’s the highlight of my week,” says Maria Maul, an art teacher at Sebastian River High School who volunteers with the program.
Maul and the others help fuse the connections between creativity and science in their students’ young minds. In the peace of the outdoors, their developing skills of observation heighten their senses as they sketch and write in nature journals.
That is just the start. Bent in concentration, as they record the zig-zag of a leaf’s edge, make note of the weather or interpret the meaning of a woodpecker’s call, research has shown they are quieting their minds and reducing stress much the way mindfulness training or meditation does.
At the same time, the children are getting important and engaging lessons in environmental studies. Organizers believe they are providing the children with an academic boost equivalent to – or better than – individual tutoring.
At the program’s behest, schools recommended students of a racial makeup reflecting their populations. All are on free or reduced lunch – a federal measure of economic need. Schools also were asked to pick more girls than boys in an attempt to compensate for the preponderance of white males in the sciences.
Toward the end of the program last year, teachers noticed a marked improvement in attention spans and concentration.
Even one week into their semester-long, weekly program, their focus was impressive for 10-year-olds. Late last month, a group from Citrus Elementary sat through a brief question-and-answer session with Beck. Then, pencil and journal in one hand and a camp chair in the other, the kids made their way through dense brush along a narrow muddy path and quietly set up.
Dwarfed by towering oaks, the children gazed at the wonderland before them. They went to work documenting various leaves, berries and butterflies.
“Was big” wrote one little girl next to her carefully drawn picture of a striped butterfly. “Zebra longwing,” called out Beck. “The Florida state butterfly.”
That got the other children scrambling for paper. But in an instant, their subject had flitted away into the brush. “You have to be quick when you’re drawing butterflies,” coached Beck with a smile.
The kids swatted away mosquitoes without complaint and ignored their muddy shoes. The antsiness of seven hours of classroom confinement seemed to melt away in the steamy stillness.
Just the week before, a different group went out on kayaks, many for the first time in their lives. In the coming weeks, they will go seining in the lagoon, braving the muck with wading boots and learning to identify their haul of seaweeds and creatures.
Their experiences, spontaneous as they may seem, have been carefully choreographed. The Audubon Advocate’s leaders are nature lovers who follow a growing movement of educators convinced that children’s brains benefit from being turned loose outdoors.
Such experiences typically happen in family life. It was Beck’s grandfather that got her into birdwatching as a child. As a young adult, she drew on that childhood passion while studying whales off the coast of Massachusetts. “You see a lot more birds than whales off the North Atlantic,” she says. She has since gone on to work as a nature guide for Sebastian’s Outdoor Center, where among other things she offers birdwatching tours by kayak.
Today, the notion of going outside to play free of adult supervision is largely a thing of the past, even in affluent suburban neighborhoods where crime is low and green space abounds. There, electronic devices are the after-school diversion.
For children in low-income neighborhoods, devices are often not an option. But neither is playing outside not just because of safety concerns but because of a dearth of parks. And research has shown the frequency of nature experiences is lower in some minority groups.
Richard Baker, who for many years directed the neighboring Florida Medical Entomology Lab, orchestrated the 1991 joint state and county purchase of 290 acres on the north side of Oslo Road, after it was threatened with development into condominiums proposed by a New Jersey developers. That parcel would become the first section of what is now the 440-acre preserve known as ORCA.
Four years ago, Baker, since retired, arranged to buy the land where the Audubon House is located from the University of Florida, which owns the entomology lab.
Despite the confines of the Audubon House’s one-acre lot, the sensation of the old oaks and dense undergrowth is of limitless and intricate goings-on, and a liberating dynamic prevails of feeling secure with the unknown.
Last month, while Richard Baker talked to an adult visitor, three children quietly disappeared. “They’ve finished. They’ve gone back into the room,” he said. “We try to give them freedom in a safe environment. That’s so rare these days that they’re able to get out and explore and have that free play. It’s very empowering and I think it’s essential for developing critical thinking and problem solving. I think it’s an element that’s missing from our society.”
Audubon Advocates volunteer Susan Lovelace recalls her utter freedom in childhood. “My mother turned me loose and never knew where I was or what I did. I wouldn’t dare say to my own grandchildren go out and play and we’ll see you at dinner,” says Lovelace, who directs the International Baccalaureate program at Sebastian River High School.
In her high school English classes, Lovelace has long used outdoor journal writing with her students, ever since becoming aware of what some call “re-wilding,” a term used in Richard Louv’s Children in Nature Network. Louv’s book “Last Child in the Woods” posits that children are suffering from “nature deficit disorder,” the lack of what Lovelace says is “the opportunity to explore and get your hands muddy,” an important aspect to brain development.
In her own readings on the subject, she was struck by the nature-centric schedule of Finnish school children, who are some of the highest-scoring in the world. “They give their kids a 15-minute break every hour to go outside,” she says. “And they don’t care about the weather. If there’s a blizzard, they still go out.”
Lovelace came along on that recent kayak trip at Audubon House. The adventure proved a challenge, particularly for a few of the fifth-graders who had never been out on the water before.
Suddenly, mullet erupted all around them, leaping into the air. As the anxious children squirmed on their wobbling kayaks, afraid a fish would land in their boats, they suddenly saw the cause of the mullet free-for-all: a dolphin came racing through the water, and as it happened, straight for their kayaks. It was too much for at least one of the girls, who tried to paddle away, in tears.
Lovelace reassured her. “It isn’t always easy for them,” she says. “But it’s so important to experience. Even though they live in Vero, a lot of them haven’t ever seen a dolphin.”
Within minutes came the kids’ reward: A mother dolphin rolled into sight with a tiny baby dolphin at her side.