Podcast: Rebecca Parks on Learning and Exploring through Nature and Science

We’re listening to the Getting Smart podcast. Where we unpack what is new and innovative in education. This is your host Jessica and I’m eager to bring you today’s episode with Rebecca Parks, the leader of two schools in Kearney, Missouri, a northeastern suburb of Kansas City. Southview Elementary is a great K through 5 school serving 450 learners.

The second school, right next door in a few classrooms borrowed from the junior high, is known as Lens, which stands for Learning and Exploring through Nature and Science, a new place-based program for about 53rd and 4th graders. Local paleo artist Gary Stobb was inspiration for Lens. And if you’re like me, right now you’re asking yourself what a paleo artist is.

Before you Google it, let me help. Gary finds or recreates fossil records like King Tut, the Iceman frozen in Europe 5,000 years ago, or the 54 foot Megalodon shark in the Smithsonian. As you can imagine, this type of work can really help bring history to life for learners. As we’ve discussed in prior episodes and on the blog, place-based learning means taking

advantage of local opportunities to bring learning to life. William Nicely, superintendent of the Kearney School District, who joins Rebecca for this episode, appreciates that Gary is a true community treasure and jumped at the opportunity to create an innovative pilot program around this local resource. Dr. Nicely is also working with the district design team to inject more real-world learning

into student experiences at Kearney High School. As part of the Kaufman Foundation’s sponsored initiative, the team has been visiting some of the best schools in the country. He talks about their efforts to add more work-based learning, community-connected projects, college credit, and industry-condential opportunities.

Let’s listen in as Tom talks to Rebecca Parks and Dr. William Nicely about place-based learning. Rebecca Parks and William Nicely, welcome to the Gettingspark podcast. Thank you. Rebecca, tell us what you do. Hi, I’m Rebecca Parks.

I’m the principal at Lens. It is a place-based school in Kearney, Missouri. Stands for learning and exploring through nature and science. That’s only part of your job. You have a second school next door, right?

I do have a second school next door, Southview Elementary. It’s a kindergarten through fifth grade building of about 450-plus students. So tell us about the back story on Lens. It was an idea that Dr. Nicely had, and it just exploded. It became one of those things where we were dreaming, and the dream turned into a reality

of, let’s just do this. And so we did. So what does it mean to be a place-based school? It’s taking your community and the surroundings, expertise around you, and using that to just further education with kids and make it more meaningful and substantial and getting them

to think and explore and soak in everything and be excited. We were over at your school digging for fossils this afternoon on a very cold day. And I was thinking to myself, you know what? These kids are going to remember this day for the rest of their lives because they found some really cool fossils and just how much that beat reading about it in a textbook.

It’s the experience that your kids have are real and they’re hands-on and applied, but that’s something that they’ll remember forever. Absolutely. So we really have just an ideal situation because Gary Stobb is local to our community and he is a paleo artist.

And so he has partnered with our school district and he orchestrates these dig pits along with the classroom teachers and the students get to go out regularly. Gary is an icon to them. In fact, they even had dressed like Gary days at school. They know he’s great with the kids.

Absolutely. Bill, what’s your back story on Gary and Lens? So Gary’s lived in our community for quite some time. He really is sort of an unknown treasure to most folks. And as I introduce him on occasion, we had his coming out party at a foundation school

district foundation fundraiser a couple of years ago. And I guard him really closely because I don’t want anybody to steal him away from us, first of all. But second of all, when it comes to paleontology and paleo art, more specifically, Gary is a global rock star.

A quick Google of Gary will pull up Nova PBS program that he did on the Iceman Reborn. He’s been in King Touch 2. He’s explored the Amazon rainforest and is routinely out in the field doing science work. But then in addition to that, he creates stuff, his real talent is art. And as we speak, there’s a 54-foot prehistoric Megalodon shark hanging in the Smithsonian

Museum, which he put together when a group of folks, and he did it right here in Carny, Missouri, which is amazing, really. And so here’s this tremendous talent. And I just thought to myself, somehow we have to expose our students to Gary and all that he knows and all that he’s become so that perhaps they can do the same thing.

So what’s your… I guess, why is this important? Why do you think that kind of learning is important for kids in Carny? I think it’s really simple. It’s all about enthusiasm.

And when students find those specific things that they have an aptitude for and an interest in, and then they’re provided an opportunity to do it in an actionable way, right? They’re active. We heard about the fossil digs, which regularly occur, but they’re out on field trips in caves looking for bats.

Everywhere they go, they’re staring at the ground looking for fossils that could be anywhere. Gary has made science fun. And obviously we have two phenomenal teachers that allow that to occur as well and propagate that in students.

So I wish our whole district could be that way. And so that’s the ultimate goal, right? How do we take this, which is happening in grades four and five, and other things that are happening at the middle school and other things that are happening at the high school level?

And how do we ultimately reach that tipping point and have every student have those incredible experiences? Because they will remember them for the rest of their lives. And what was interesting is what I was thinking when those kids were out there in the cold is that they don’t look cold.

They were so excited. It was snowing and a little bit spitting and blowing and cold. And they were excited to be digging up fossils. Rebecca, you’re working on a dissertation on the subject of play space. So you must be enthusiastic about it.

I definitely am. Just recognizing that the kids’ excitement and their engagement for this particular school, it is about nature and science. But kids didn’t have to have that pull towards those subject areas, if you will. Just being hands-on and immersed in what’s around them gets them excited.

And now you see kiddos that maybe weren’t so excited about science love it. They don’t realize that that’s what’s all around them. This has this interesting link to identity development. Because you’re dealing with third and fourth graders, that’s such a formative time when kids begin to understand themselves and the place that they’re from.

Is that part of your enthusiasm for both working with this group of kids and connecting them to place? It is. And for them to realize what’s around them, to get their hands dirty, if you will. But also just because I feel like it’s such a formative time on them becoming problem solvers

versus looking for the answers, if you will. They are not trained, I don’t believe at that age, of just immediately looking for what’s the right answer. They are learning how to work collaboratively with one another and be problem solvers on their own and come up with their own questions and thoughts on how to expand on things and

bring out one another’s knowledge. So it’s just a really exciting time for kids. Yeah, that’s cool. And thought about that, but this afternoon when we were digging around, there was a lot of cooperative behavior.

Kids were super excited about what they’re doing, but they’re careful about including their colleagues even after a discovery. So a lot of transferable skills happening there. Absolutely. Life skills.

So more broadly, Bill, your district is one of 15 in Kansas City that’s really trying to extend and introduce more real-world learning. Why does that feel like a timely initiative? For us, both timely and exciting, we have been in Carney School District sort of teetering with or experimenting with real-world learning.

And when we came across the initiatives that Kaufman was doing, trying to collectively have all of these school districts in the Kansas City metropolitan area delve into the initiative. In particular, our interest is that we recognize students that encounter some kind of real-world learning experience, whether it’s what we’ve just heard about in the Linn School at the elementary level or at the high school.

They learned in a different way. The skills that they acquire are more rich and immersive. And what we know about that is they’re going to go off when they leave us. Whatever their post-high school endeavor is, they’re likely to be more successful. And what we want for kids is what everybody wants for kids.

That is a ultimately get a great job because great job equals great life. And a lot of these real-world experiences are place-based. They’re client or community-connected projects. They’re immersive. They’re work-based learning opportunities.

So this is, in some respects, the high school version of place-based learning, right? Yes, it is. And there’s lots of opportunities there in a wide variety of ways. And so what we’re really endeavoring to do now is identify all of those opportunities that currently exist and then future ones that may exist.

But the great thing about the collaborative effort of the 15 school district is we’re all working together towards the same common goal. So two things are occurring as a result of that. A, that we’re collaborating ourselves in a way we’re sort of modeling what it’s all about and therefore sharing ideas, which increases efficiency.

But in addition to that, that collaboration with other school districts on both sides of the state really lends legitimacy to our efforts here in Carnet. Our hometown people that are assisting us look to the Carnet School District as one of the leaders in this effort, but also know that there are 14 other school districts that are doing the same thing we are.

So they sort of legitimize the effort. Oh, this really must be important. I think that’s going to help us get down the road faster than we normally would have otherwise. Well, it’s also exciting as a regional effort that you’re building support with post-secondary institutions and with employers that are all big fans of the real world learning initiative.

They want kids to have more work experience. They want them to have well-developed success skills when they leave. They want them to have a strong sense of identity and ability to act on the world. So you’re building demand for this in a constituency by doing it together. So that’s really been exciting to see.

What we’re finding is our business partners, what they get out of this or what they perceive they get out of it before they sort of enter into the initiative is, hey, this could ultimately be an economic driver for me. It’s talent acquisition, if you will. But what they also find is the secondary benefit is that their existing employees become motivated

when they partner with high school age students because they feel like that’s giving them an enhanced self-worth because they’re helping kids, right? And that just makes them love their job even more. Right. So that’s a benefit of satisfaction of employees that are also parents, but it’s also building

the local talent pipeline. Absolutely. So it’s an exciting initiative. If we sort of flash forward three to five years from now, what would you like Lens to be?

Oh, I’d love it to be a full-blown school. Whether that is K through 12, 3 through 8, just giving more kids the opportunity to… What might a middle school experience look like? I think that it could look very similar to what our third and fourth grade experiences, but a lot more collaboration.

And I think that’s super important, the collaboration among the kids from whether it’s third grade through eighth grade or kindergarten through ninth, whatever it may be. And you can imagine high school field trips with Gary that would be life changing. Right, for everyone. Yes, absolutely.

And the older students mentoring the younger students as well. And Bill, if we think forward three to five years, what would you like to see your graduates leaving Corny with? Ideally, we want everyone of them to graduate with at least one market value asset, have a strong understanding of where they’re going and what they want to be, and feel confident

they have the skill set to get there. We really loved our visit to Lens this afternoon and I appreciate your leadership here and Corny, thanks for the work you do. Thank you. Thank you.

A big thanks to Rebecca Parks and Dr. William Nicely for an inspiring tool of Corny Schools and for joining us on this episode. Lens is a great example of leveraging a local asset to engage students in inquiry based learning as well as place based learning. If you want to learn more about place based education, take a listen to episode 168 on

giving the gift of place. It was actually recorded live at the Teton Science School and we’ve got it linked in the show notes and on the blog. That’s it for today listeners, but before you go, don’t forget to rate and review the show as well as hit subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in for the Getting Smart podcast. This is Jessica signing off.