Near-Peer Mentorship in San Lorenzo

This year, we expanded our elementary field trip program in San Lorenzo Unified, welcoming more 4th grade classes to San Lorenzo High School's half-acre Native Plant Forest.

In the winter months, students walk a mile through their neighborhood to learn about indigenous plant uses and Ohlone natural history from an unexpected kind of teacher: teenagers. High school docents from the Druids Environmental Club guide their younger neighbors through hands-on lessons, identifying tule and its role in boatmaking, explaining why hunters selected elderberry for arrows, and taking turns at the bow drill to make friction fire. For elementary students in dual immersion programs, the docents teach these lessons in both English and Spanish.

Not a field trip to a distant museum

For the 4th graders, this isn't a field trip to a distant museum. They walk to a native plant forest in their own neighborhood and learn from people who look like them, who come from the same community, proof that you don't have to be an adult to be an expert. For the high schoolers, many of them first-generation college-bound, it's a chance to step into leadership and discover that the knowledge they've been building actually matters.

This is what programming looks like when it comes full circle: career and technical education for secondary students that creates experiential, place-based learning for elementary students. The docents are becoming educators, naturalists, and stewards. In the process, they're showing younger kids in their own neighborhood what's possible.