The six Pescadero preschoolers shrieked with excitement and skipped up the dirt path toward the chicken coop. They were collecting eggs for their lunch and had just finished picking radishes from a plot of land down the hill.
“Look at that one!” said wide-eyed Morgan Riedy, 5, motioning to a speckled rooster ambling her way.
 Lizbeth Hernandez, left, and Morgan Riedy play with their baskets before heading out to pick vegetables at Pie Ranch. The two young students are taking part in a new program designed to increase South Coast instructional time by getting kids out to the farm. |
“Gallo,” Morgan repeated.
The verdant hills, make-shift teepee and plots of vegetables that sprawl over Pie Ranch’s landscape don’t look like your typical classroom, and that’s the point says Norka Bayley, a longtime preschool teacher who instructs the 18 preschoolers in the Puente-to-Pie summer program.
“Kids need to express themselves using all parts of their brain,” said Bayley. “You lose the kids when it’s too monotonous.”
Enter Puente to Pie, a three-week pilot program at Pie Ranch to help Spanish-speaking kids expand their vocabulary and learn the basics in their native language while teaching English speakers some essential Spanish. The thinking was simple: Why coop up kids in a classroom when they could learn much more by being outside on a farm in a Spanish-immersion program?
Pie Ranch co-founder Jered Lawson spearheaded the program along with local nonprofit Puente de la Costa Sur and a handful of parents from the La Honda-Pescadero school district in response to news that the elementary school was ranked in the lowest 5 percent of California public schools for student performance and had some choices to make. The Obama administration laid out four options for low-performing schools wishing to take advantage of federal “Race to the Top” funding, and Lawson and other parents agreed that this program is one chance to increase instructional time.
But instead of a longer school day, as the model proposed, the parent group pressed for a longer school year with Spanish immersion and project-based learning opportunities woven into the curriculum.
Andy Wilson, president of the La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District board, said that Puente-to-Pie was the parents’ collaborative baby.
“We knew we needed more instructional minutes but we had the latitude to decide when and where that would go,” Wilson said. “With Pie Ranch, there were three weeks of six hours of learning a day—outside on a farm. What kid wouldn’t want that?”
It turned out almost all kids did, and Puente-to-Pie had to turn away kids this year. The schedule of Puente-to-Pie is any kid’s dream. They arrive around 8:30 am, eat breakfast, have circle time in a teepee where they learn songs and read a book. Then they go out and pick vegetables and learn about animals. After lunch, they play and plant in the garden and water the plants. The catch is that it’s all in Spanish.
Pescadero Elementary School is made up primarily of Latino students who speak Spanish as a first language. Research has shown that when students learn concepts in their first language, they are more likely to learn those concepts in a second language. When you couple that with project-based learning, says Bayley, you’ve got an educational bonanza.
But Kerry Lobel, director of Puente, hopes the program can expand in the upcoming years.
“We all have every intention of continuing this next year,” said Lobel.
“You know it’s a success when kids are literally vibrating because they couldn’t go to sleep because they wanted to go to school the next day. That’s the true test of this program -- can we keep that enthusiasm and love of learning throughout the year?”
It costs about $25,000 to put on the program for three weeks, says Lobel, noting it was funded through federal grants.
“The only bummer is that it’s only three weeks,” said Pescadero parent Vicky Fought as she watched her daughter Catalina watering a plant in the garden. It was the last day of the summer program, and Fought said she’ll miss the interactive learning. “My daughter comes home full of Spanish words and sings Spanish songs all day long.”
Eckert, who has been teaching for more than two decades, said that the Pie Ranch experience trumps any of her other teaching experiences.
“This is the best thing I’ve ever seen in terms of class learning,” she said. “They’re all so excited to learn and they get to experience nature and learn this beautiful language of Spanish.”
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