Children & Nature network

Rona Zollinger, 2010 Natural Teachers Award Finalist

– November 23, 2010
By Sara St. Antoine

Sara St. Antoine is a C&NN Senior Writer and Switzer Foundation Fellow

When Rona Zollinger became a teacher, she couldn’t wait to make a difference. She’d grown up with a teacher for a father, one who thought nothing of organizing the family’s summer vacations around topics in U.S. history. So Rona knew that learning could be dynamic, fun, hands-on, and connected to real places. After several years teaching U.S. history and peer mediation in a large school in San Diego, though, she grew frustrated. She’d fill her lessons with stories of social movements and change, but was convinced none of it mattered once her students walked out the school doors. “They were dealing with poverty, gangs, immigration issues,” Rona explains. “They were fighting for their lives.”


Today Rona has found her place as founder and teacher of the Environmental Studies Academy at Briones School, an alternative high school in Contra Costa County. Here students blend their academic requirements with hands-on projects related to the restoration of nearby Alhambra Creek. They work alongside community members. They work with their parents. They talk daily about what they are doing and what they could be doing better. Most important, they are deeply immersed in the natural world. Whether monitoring wildlife or writing in a nature journal, they build a relationship to the natural areas where they live. “Every summer my entire extended family went to Yosemite National Park to fish, camp, and hike,” Rona recalls. “I grew up going to nature for entertainment and more.” Now she is passing on that appreciation to some of the district’s most challenged students, many of whom have had only limited contact with the natural world.


The students at Briones School are anything but typical. Rona describes them as students who have been challenged by life’s circumstances but are nonetheless eager to learn. Within traditional schools, they struggled to find meaning and engagement. When Rona first came to Briones, her job was to meet with these students individually for one hour a week to create a program of study precisely tailored to their needs. The work was unlike anything she had ever done, and she found that it taught her the importance of meeting the specific learning styles of individual learners. But when an opportunity opened up to connect her students with an ecological restoration at the nearby Alhambra Creek, Rona jumped at the chance to do even more. She committed her independent study students to working a few hours a week at the creek. Then things took off.


Today, the Environmental Studies Academy (ESA) is a full-time program and it has been so successful in addressing the emotional needs of its students that Contra Coast County Mental Health Services awarded the school district $175,000 in annual funding to expand her program and deepen its impact on youth mental health. Quantitatively, ESA students experienced a 12% increase in attendance, 96% reduction in truancy, 85% reduction in disciplinary issues, and 45% increase in academic effort. Students’ grade point averages increased by 1.34 points and they scored 24% higher in standardized test proficiency rates compared to non-ESA students at the same school In addition, 90% of enrolled students graduated from the program


For all these successes, Rona acknowledges that the day-to-day work can be hard and that she is very conscious of the possibility of burnout. Throughout the year, she actively reflects on how she is doing and what she needs to do to achieve “balance and joy.” But she doesn’t just leave these reflections at home. If a day felt hard to her, it was undoubtedly hard for her students too. She’ll plan to build in something restorative for the next day—a quiet walk to a beautiful place, perhaps, or a bit of painting. Similarly, Rona doesn’t leave the evaluation of the program just to the teachers; she regularly asks the students, parents and community members to talk about what is working in the program and how those successes can be expanded. Rona also thinks it’s vital that she lives in the neighborhood where she teaches, which, among other things, allows her to walk to school and avoid the stresses of a highway commute. In short, Rona doesn’t just give lip service to the idea of community; by dissolving the boundaries between student and teacher, home and work, and school and nature, she is helping her students find their voice and find their home. As one student writes,


“Before entering the ESA, I was unsure of what the future was going to look like, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to succeed in a traditional high school. Now I am in my senior year of the ESA and I see how the program helped me to go through my own heroes journey. I have been involved in many environmental projects and outdoor adventures that have helped me to feel connected to my local watershed and to my community. As a result, I have developed into a strong, competent leader with a bright career in teaching. I am eternally grateful to Rona for everything.”

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