This year, the fourth-graders at the Dolores Mission School in East Los Angeles will get a new approach to math, science and history because one of their teachers, Nicole Hill, studied the agricultural practices of coffee farmers in Costa Rica this summer. How are coffee farms relevant to elementary students? “I see this research … fits with mathematics, I see it fitting in to science, and we honor Cesar Chavez every year and I see that fitting in with discussions about history and farm labor,” Hill said.
A student at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Education, Hill is in her second year as a member of the Partners in Los Angeles Catholic Education Corps, a nationally recognized teacher service corps where members get a debt-free masters degree and their teaching certificate while serving as full time teachers in under-resourced schools.
She was one of 11 educators from the United States who received Earthwatch Education Fellowships to Costa Rica. The fellowships get teachers out of the classroom to learn and conduct research on the environment. The teachers are required to take what they’ve learned back to the classroom to instruct students on environmental and sustainability issues.
“The issues of the environment and agriculture and the integrity of the food supply are so important to me.” Hill said. “I just value so much what this study is trying to accomplish.”
Three days after returning home, Hill was bursting with the excitement about her trip and its mission.
“I am still on cloud nine,” she said. “I am glowing with the experience.” Her experience included two days of training and five mornings climbing mountain slopes to reach coffee farms, spending hours in the sun measuring the height and diameter of designated coffee plants and then counting every bean on specific branches.
Earthwatch Institute, a nonprofit environmental research organization, is conducting a multi-year survey of the coffee farming practices of the Coope Tarrazu coffee cooperative, a group of 2,600 Costa Rican farmers. Earthwatch scientists are developing data that will encourage the farmers to go back to more sustainable, earth-friendly practices.
In recent years, under pressure to produce larger crops, farmers have moved from away from traditional, environmentally safe farming methods; they’ve cleared forests and adopted the use of herbicides and pesticides that have damaged the soil, threatened wildlife and poisoned the environment. While these methods have resulted in short-term gains in productivity, researchers say could do lasting damage.