A lesson for a lifetime.

Teacher Lori Frank knew the managers at Idaho Forest Industries well but still had to summon up her courage to ask them for a big favor. She wanted to teach a hands-on forest management course at Coeur d'Alene High School. Would the company let the students decide which trees to cut on 10 acres of its land?

"We said 'No, we can't do that...but would 600 acres do it for you?'" recalls IFI Vice President Mike Welling with a laugh. "She just about fell out of her chair."

The result of that conversation is a high school course apparently unique in the country.

When she applied for an internship at IFI in 1993, Frank had already worked for the U.S. Forest Service and taught high school science for 14 years. But she wanted to balance her knowledge of public forests with information about the management of private timberland. She became friends with IFI staff and told them she wanted to teach a senior-level forestry field course.

Keenly aware that logging and environmental protection are controversial topics in the Inland Northwest, she made it clear that her students would hear many different perspectives. Lecturers have included a forester for Idaho Fish and Game, a Forest Service hydrologist, and a wildlife expert from the Audubon Society.

"They have never sat me down and asked my agenda," she says. "I think they trust my integrity as a teacher."

The two dozen students chosen for the popular course learn about logging regulations, wildlife habitat, forest diseases, stream protection, and the importance of the timber industry. They earn two semester's credit for work that includes reporting on current events and spending two afternoons a week at the site.

When the class writes its plan for managing a 20-acre parcel of IFI land, Frank says, "I try so hard not to steer them. I want them to consider values and make up their own minds." Her greatest fear is that her class will become political. "That would kill it," she says.

The company asked only two things of the students' logging plan: Its execution couldn't cost IFI more than the timber was worth and it had to improve the site. The company leaves the definition of "improvement" up to the students.

The first year the class decided to clearcut five acres and selectively harvest the rest. IFI vice president Welling was invited to critique the final plan as an environmentalist looking for flaws. Brad Gilbert, a Forest Service district ranger, played the part of an industry forester challenging the students' decisions.

"It was fun to see how much ownership the kids had in that plan," says Frank. "They were going to fight for it, tooth and nail."

Frank launched the course with a $6,000 Toyota Tapestry grant, given for experimental science programs, and IFI donates 25 percent of proceeds from the cut trees for field equipment. Last summer Potlatch Corporation sent Frank and two students to study industrial forest practices in Arkansas and Minnesota.

A grant from the Pinchot Institute for Conservation sent seven of Frank's students to the 1996 World Forestry Congress in Washington, DC. There, Welling and Frank were inundated with questions from conference attendees who wanted to start similar courses. IFI is pleased to be getting people into the woods for a first-hand look at what it takes to manage land, Welling says, adding that watching the students at work has renewed his faith in young people.

Environmental activist Barry Rosenberg, a self-described "old tree hugger" who accompanied students on one trip, feels the same way. "I love this," he says. "This is the future."

Lori Frank looks to the future and sees a growing human population that will ruin the earth without wise land management. "I'm a conservationist," she says, adding that it's important for students to recognize that their own use of fiber impacts the forests. Her course is not forestry, she emphasizes, but forest management.

"It is based on the belief that the land must be managed, she says, "even if it is as wilderness."