St. Charles Parish Schools: Luling, La.

Several years of enthusiastic wetlands education and preservation resulted in St. Charles Parish Schools in Luling, La., being named the 2006 winner of the National Civic Star Award.

The service-learning program, known as LaBranche Wetland Watchers, was started in 1998 by science teacher Barry Guillot to give seventh graders at Hurst Middle School in Luling the opportunity to meet academic requirements through service to the community. The LaBranche wetlands border Lake Ponchartrain, and the surrounding communities' livelihoods are based partly on the economic and recreational values the wetlands offer. Wetlands also help provide protection from floods and hurricanes.

The program was selected for the top honors before Louisiana was hit by Hurricane Katrina. While St. Charles Parish Schools experienced significant damage and closed for 12 days, the district was spared from the destruction that affected other nearby parishes. The LaBranche wetlands program is fully back on track.

Support for the program has come from more than 35 regional, state and federal agencies; corporations; universities, and private organizations, which have provided resources, expertise, volunteers, equipment and funding.

Examples of partner support include Audubon Zoo educators, who introduce various animals to the students and explain their life cycles, diets and food webs. Representatives from the Lake Ponchartrain Basin Foundation and Motiva Enterprises guide students through water-quality testing procedures for salinity, turbity, temperature and dissolved oxygen. University of New Orleans researchers show students how to use dip and cast nets to collect and identify macroinvertebrates and help students use two-way magnifiers to identify and classify the specimens they find.

Students who take part in the program ultimately share the information they gain while mentoring younger students during field experiences or at public speaking opportunities.

The program offers different experiences to meet the wide spectrum of academic abilities among the students. The gifted are challenged, and others, including children with disabilities, are motivated to learn more and to provide service to their community.

Students who typically have or create problems in the classroom often become good students in the program. One, for example, began the year with low self-esteem because of a nonverbal learning disability that hinders his ability to read and write but not his ability to express ideas verbally. Through various outreach events, the student spoke to more than 15,000 people and was chosen to participate in a special summer wetland exploration program with the University of New Orleans.

Another student, who has a parole officer, refused to write anything in his language arts class but wrote nearly two pages for an assignment during and after a field experience.

The program exposes students to career opportunities and helps them understand how to be positive, contributing members of the community. It also helps them see how classroom topics are applied in the real world.

As participants, students become wetlands advocates. Since the program began, seventh-grade participants have spoken to more than 60,000 people across southern Louisiana about the value of wetlands and the challenges such areas face. Each year Hurst students also share their knowledge with students from five other schools on wetland field trips.

Program partners and students working together have provided more than 45,000 hours of volunteer service. They have planted more than 2,500 trees and in their cleanup efforts have collected more than 1,500 bags of trash plus truckloads of dumped junk.

The land adopted by students seven years ago is part of 28 acres donated several months ago to the St. Charles Recreation Department with the mandated purpose of being used as a family park and picnic area and for wetland reclamation projects.

At the time of the National Civic Star Award selection, the state lieutenant governor's office was helping to coordinate with an Americorps group to build what would be the first nature trails in the region. The plan was for high school students to build the interpretive kiosks and for middle-school students to map the trails with GPS instruments, to develop the interpretive information for self-guided tours and to present animals and activities during weekend family days. While trees downed by Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed shortly after Katrina, remain to be cleared from the area, the project is progressing.

The Hurst Middle School program has been recognized numerous times. It was selected for four consecutive years as a Louisiana Learn and Serve America Leadership Model Project by the lieutenant governor's Louisiana Serve Commission. Hurst remains the first and only middle school in Louisiana to be honored as a National Service Learning Leader School.

The wetlands program was featured as the top student environmental project in the nation on the ABC Children First special "Protecting Our Planet," hosted by Diane Sawyer. It also appeared on the CNN special "People Count: Hot on the Trail," hosted by Jane Fonda, which aired internationally on CNN and nationally on the TBS superstation.

Attention to wetlands restoration and protection has taken on new statewide significance since Katrina and Rita hit. The LaBranche program expects to continue to play a leadership role in fostering wetlands education and protection.

For more information, contact Superintendent Rodney Lafon at St. Charles Parish Schools, 13855 Rivet Rd., Luling, La. 70070, or call [phone]. Lafon's e-mail address is [e-mail].