Trice Padecky, Principal, Cross & Crown Lutheran School
Rohnert Park, California

At Cross and Crown Lutheran School, we have focused on community building in a variety of ways. The Watershed Project, Raptor, Raising Steelhead Trout, and Community Garden programs focus on the natural world and stewardship of the earth. These programs also connect our students to each other, their local city and county communities, and to the world at large.

We have a program of watershed education that begins in kindergarten and extends through eighth grade. All classes have "watershed buddies" where older and younger students work together to study our local Russian River watershed. Over the course of the year, our Kindergarten students along with their 6^th grade buddies follow Copeland Creek's journey from its source on Sonoma Mountain, past our school into the Laguna de Santa Rosa, onto the Russian River until it flows into the Pacific Ocean. Each grade studies a different aspect of Copeland Creek based on the science standards at their grade level. This program has built a caring cohesive community where older students present science workshops in geology, animals, plants & water monitoring.

As our students make their way out into the natural world, they become involved with other people and agencies connected to that world. Knowing our schools interest in our local creek, the city public works manager asked our students to help adults from local agencies plant over 4,000 trees along a badly eroded section of the creek. This project helped to reduce flooding and to rebuild a wildlife corridor. Our students have a sense of accomplishment when they stand back and see the beginnings of a new forest, which they helped create for our community! They have since gone on to plant an additional area sponsored by the Open Space District of Sonoma County. In this project they will also be responsible for maintaining plant growth. This has been a wonderful application of science solving community problems related to the environment.

As our students interact with, care for, and "adopt" various stretches of the creek, it becomes an outdoor classroom for more than science. They do art projects and creative writing along the creek. Each year our older students have submitted poems to an international environmental poetry contest called "River of Words". On several occasions we have had students win awards. One of our students won a regional award and had her poem published. Her poem has now been set to music and will be performed as part of an opera. She and many of her teachers will enjoy the opera when it is performed in Walnut Creek, California. With awe we have become aware of the unforeseeable but awesome possibilities of poetry writing by the creek. The students' sense of community and the world at large has been expanded to include poets and musicians in the Bay Area.

The school has also connected students to the international community through a program we have for third graders that focuses on raptors, birds of prey. In this program they learn not only about raptors and the environmental crises they face, but also about scientists in programs around the world who help birds. In addition, they are connected through a pen pal program run by our school and an agency in Mexico called Pronatura. Our students exchange letters and crafts with a class in Veracruz, Mexico who live in the migration flyway where birds from our area go for the winter.

Our belief in the importance of community building and stewardship for the earth, as well as each other, continues to express itself in a variety of ways. Even now we are working on new “adven-

tures". In an effort to increase their numbers, our middle school students are raising endangered steelhead trout for release in the Russian River. We are also soon to dedicate a church and school community garden whose chores and produce will be shared by the school as well as congregational members. We have dreams of sharing our produce with the needy in our community.

Community building is an on-going effort here at Cross and Crown Lutheran School. Reaching out to endangered birds and fish, reforesting creek sides, writing inspiring poetry and planting food to feed the hungry are empowering ways for our students to connect with the world around them. Our dreams are coming true!

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