40 Days and 40 Nights in San Pedro, Belize
By Katie Marlowe (‘04)

Since 2001, Smith College has sent a team of student teachers to San Pedro, Belize each summer to lead the Coral Reef Ed-Ventures program. Supported by the Environmental Science and Policy (ES&P) Program, Coral Ed is a free educational program for local school children ages seven to eleven which aims to teach them about the reef and its importance to both their community and the world. The program is in collaboration with the local marine reserve, Hol Chan, where Smith professors Paulette Peckol (Biological Sciences and ES&P) and Al Curran (Geology and ES&P) conduct research.

The 2005 teaching team met for the first time several months before the end of the spring semester. We were a diverse group – sophomores and seniors, students of biology, geology, education, anthropology, and environmental science – and we were all eager to teach and learn. With the guidance of professors Al Curran and Susan Etheredge (Education and Child Study) our team spent the first week of June packing, buying supplies, reviewing the curriculum, organizing, and re-packing most of what we would need in San Pedro. Will marshmallows melt and stick together if we pack them? (They did.) If we bring Swimmy by Leo Lionni, will that bag be over the 70 lb. limit? (Not quite … put it in!) Maybe some more duct tape wrapped around that box will keep it together en route... And so we arrived in San Pedro, Belize with all bags, packages, boxes, and teaching materials intact.

Once in San Pedro, we spent two busy, hot, sweaty weeks advertising the program in local schools. During this time we also got to know many of the people with whom we would be working: teachers, principals, storeowners and workers, employees of Hol Chan Marine Reserve, and (most importantly) the students! We spent another week preparing for and then facilitating teacher “workshops” for local schoolteachers. These were primarily aimed at providing a forum for teachers to experience, experiment with, and think about different ways to use the local environment in everyday teaching. Our fourth week was spent with professors Peckol and Curran, exploring the barrier and patch reefs so we could be as familiar with them as possible before launching into the two-week Coral Reef Ed-Ventures program.

Once the program began, we spent every weekday morning with anywhere from 40 to 100 children, teaching about the reef system through lessons, activities, skits, reading and writing poetry and stories, discussions, and games. As in previous years, we took them on glass-bottom boat field trips to see patch reefs and mangroves up close. This year we invited many local guest speakers to help our students see how people around them work with and rely on the reef every day. Guests included a local dive master, rangers from the Hol Chan Marine Reserve, members of the high school club “Guardians of the Reef,” a Peace Corps volunteer who studies sea turtles, and a fisherman who uses small scale fish traps in his work. We topped the program off with a grand “graduation” party, complete with a dramatic student performance and presentation of “Coral Reef Expert” cards.

Next year we hope to see the program grow from its already sturdy roots, perhaps reaching a broader age group and expanding the curriculum with new topics and ideas the next teaching team is sure to bring. Surely the measured success of any program is a complex matter, but after spending six weeks with some of San Pedro’s brilliant youth, it is clear that Coral Ed is a positive and educational part of their summers. Many children this year came to the program remembering from previous years what zooxanthellae are, what conservation means and with desires to be symbiologists, and marine park rangers. Our team is happy to have taught and learned from these wonderful children, and wishes the best for the next group of teachers.