Teachers go ape at L.A. zoo’s workshop on endangered species

Fifteen teachers stepped into a tray of disinfectant, then lined up eyeball to eyeball with the orangutans.

The disinfectant was to protect the apes, not the people. Viruses might be clinging to the humans’ shoes.

Both animals and teachers were behind the scenes at the Los Angeles Zoo, taking part in a recent two-day workshop on the role of zoos in saving endangered species.

The workshop, offered through UCLA Extension, gave the teachers a credit toward the continuing education requirements for pay raises in the Los Angeles Unified and most other school districts. The course also provided the 16 teachers with up-to-the-minute information on a subject they rely on to interest even their worst students.

Linda Wiese, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade life science, English and art at Immaculate Conception School in Monrovia, said her students would rather study about animals than play. “If my seventh-graders are having life science and it’s time for recess, they don’t want to go,” she said. Wiese noted that she had signed up for the zoo workshop for a very personal reason--she once saw two endangered California condors soaring in the wild, an experience her students may never have, since the few remaining birds are now in captivity.

“Everyone loves an animal,” said Sue Williams, who teaches seventh- and eighth-grade life science at Bell Gardens Intermediate School in the Montebello Unified School District. That includes children who are not “strong in books.”

Animals are such effective motivators, Williams said, that she always has some in her class. She finds that children are fascinated by creatures as humble as the pill bug (“And if one gets away, what does it matter?”). Her grander menageries have included rats, tarantulas and a Burmese python.

Sandi Wells, a science teacher at Chaparral Middle School in Moorpark Unified School District, said she, too, keeps animals in the classroom. Iguanas and other classroom pets are often useful in teaching responsibility as well as science, she said. “I’ve taken kids who are behavior problems and made them my animal keepers, and I’ve seen some real turnarounds.”

As zoo keeper Gail Bruner told the teachers in the endangered-species workshop, all primates except humans are threatened with extinction in their native habitats. But orangutans are breeding so successfully in zoos that some, like Eloise, a mother of four at the Los Angeles Zoo, have been temporarily sterilized by implantation of birth-control medication under their skin. Zoos have had less success breeding gorillas, Bruner noted: Captive males tend to have low sperm counts, and pairs attempting to mate are often harassed by other members of the group.

Keeper Bruner had taken Williams, Wells and the other teachers behind the artificial mountain and moat where most zoo visitors observe the orangutans. In the normally off-limits area where the keepers tend the redheaded apes, the teachers saw the bags of Monkey Chow and crates of yams and fruit the animals eat. They learned that the young apes, called “the kids” by their keepers, don’t get oranges, which upset their stomachs. As Bruner explained: “Onions and spinach are high in Vitamin C, so they get those instead.”

One of the keepers’ tasks is to make sure that Mickey, a male with epilepsy, receives his daily dose of anti-convulsants mashed up with a banana.

Two young orangutans munched on passion vine and stared at the humans as Bruner spoke. Bruner reminded the teachers to stand well back from the cages because the animals are dangerously strong.

Workshop participant Eileen Kaplan, who teaches kindergarten in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn in New York, said she had written a whole reading program around animals.

“I find, in working with disadvantaged students, there’s very little that motivates kids, but animals sure do,” Kaplan said. When she is teaching the short vowel sounds, she has her students draw a tiny elephant over each short e and a little octopus over each short o .

Participant Linda Wexler teaches college-level biology at Santa Monica High School. Her older students are also intrigued with animals, she said. Wexler sends her students to the zoo to observe a particular species of animal and prepare an ethogram, a catalogue of all the things that animal does.

During the workshop, the teachers learned that the zoo’s research department is compiling an ethogram on the giant eland, a rare subspecies of African antelope. The Los Angeles Zoo has five young giant elands, one of only three captive herds worldwide.

Among the more puzzling giant eland behaviors the teachers observed: The antelopes lower their heads and rub their horns and foreheads in muddy urine. Zoo researcher Nickie Miller said she and her colleagues do not know why the eland does this. One reason for studying elands, Miller explained, is to accumulate information that may be helpful in breeding the animals when they become sexually mature.

Karen McMahon, a teacher at Jefferson Elementary School in the Lennox School District, recently did a unit on animals with her third-graders. “My kids went crazy,” she said. They even asked for additional work. McMahon said she was able to use their interest in animals to teach such non-science subjects as reading, writing and art. Even her limited-English speakers joined in.

“They go home at night and watch the nature shows on Channel 28 when they can get their relatives to turn off the junk,” she said.

Greg Smet, who teaches sixth-grade science and health at Crescent Intermediate School in Anaheim Hills, said he has been teaching his students about endangered species for three years. Each student chooses an endangered animal, then writes a paper about it and makes a stuffed paper model.

“Besides just learning about the animal, this gets them to do research and research writing, which is very useful in junior high,” Smet said.

Several teachers said they felt a social responsibility to teach about threatened animals. Cathy Webster, a health and science teacher at Robert Peary Junior High School in Gardena, estimates that she makes 300 students a year more aware of environmental issues. The plight of endangered animals touches many students, she said: “I can teach them about animals in a way I can’t teach them about plants.”

She speculated that students are particularly moved because “we’re animals, we’re in the system, and we’re the biggest cause of extinction.”

The teachers said their own heightened interest in endangered species was one thing they would take back to their classrooms. “If I’m excited about it, the kids will be excited about it,” Williams said.

Some had ideas for specific classroom projects as well. Benita Mysorski, a math teacher at Luther Burbank Junior High School in Los Angeles, plans to use a shopping list prepared by the zoo to teach graphing.

“I like to give them the opportunity to work with real data,” said Mysorski, who believes her students will be intrigued to learn that each month zoo animals consume, among other edibles, 17 tons of alfalfa, 2,600 chicks, 6,000 crickets, 10 sacks of Flamingo Diet and 3,000 pounds of horse meat.

Almost all the teachers said they intend to give lessons on the California condor. With the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Los Angeles Zoo is participating in a breeding program that is the last hope of survival for the huge native vultures, none of which remain in the wild. Besides taking notes on the local condor program, the teachers traced life-size drawings of the bird from a model provided by the zoo.

Barbara Marchant, who teaches at Bret Harte Elementary School in Burbank, said she plans to hang the paper model on a wall of her classroom and let her third-graders measure themselves against the 9 1/2-foot wingspan of the vanishing bird.

Linda Wexler also plans to bring the model to school. As she explained: “You can put it over your door and say, ‘This is it, kids. There are only 27 of these left.’ ”