Calmont School teaches earth-friendly living

IRIS SMOOT/Acorn Newspapers HANDS-ON LEARNING- Rory McClellan, 11, left, and Ryan Doctorow, 12, spend their Monday morning in school scraping and sanding paint off of boards from old, worn benches, preparing the wood to be painted and reassembled into new benches. Tucked away in the folds of the Santa Monica Mountains is a school that places emphasis not only on quality education, but also on environmental awareness- weighing the importance of both equally.

Calmont School, a private school in Calabasas, instructs students up to ninth grade in an environmental education program that goes hand-in-hand with their regular curriculum. It is led by Jon Earl and Ellen Petty, longtime employees of Calmont.

Program activities include organic gardening, plant identification, hikes through Malibu Creek State Park and writing letters regarding concerns about the environment.

"This is the sort of perspective that kids could go say, 'Oh look, we're growing organic food that doesn't have pesticides, it doesn't have herbicides, it's not hurting the earth,'" Earl said.

The entire Calmont staff, including Petty and Earl, incorporates eco-conscious learning into their lesson plans.

"All the teachers here are very hip to these kind of things too," Earl said. "We're really part of a team of environmental education that includes all of the regular teachers as well."

Moves to new home

After 32 years at their Topanga location, Calmont recently relocated to the 22-acre Cottontail Ranch in Calabasas, a move that has helped increase the school's ability to teach students earth-friendly habits.

"The lease was terminated June 13 of this year, and that made us have to decide if we (were) going to find another place to rent, or buy," Calmont Principal Judy Chamberlain said. "There were no places immediately apparent to us (other than Cottontail Ranch) that maintain the same philosophy and commitment to the environment."

In addition to the outdoor Friday program, students are taught practical skills such as lawn mowing and general maintenance. The school also engages in "recycling, reusing, reducing and reinventing" on a daily basis.

"The carpets in the classrooms are recycled out of old ones," Chamberlain said. "We use resustainable and energyefficient products and low VOC (toxic) paint so no gasses are emitted from the paint."

A summer camp program is also offered at Calmont during which organic lunches made from homemade ingredients are served, and activities such as music, ceramics and woodworking are available.

Worn-out benches scattered around the ranch could have been easily thrown away and replaced by new ones when Calmont transferred to Cottontail, but instead a more "constructive" approach was taken.

Athletic director Daren Springett helped the students take apart, sand, paint and reconstruct the benches, giving them something to call their own and be proud of.

"I decided to incorporate practical skills and activities into a traditional camp," Springett explained, "so you're actually teaching kids things that a lot of other kids can't do."

While the school is equipped with 15 classrooms, much of the learning takes place outdoors whenever possible.

"Our program is academic and welldefined by this location," Chamberlain said. "When you're doing a project in the classroom that gets big and you have plenty of room to go outdoors, we do."

A fire pit, amphitheater and a tree house are notable features of the ranch uncommon to other elementary and middle schools in the area.

"I think the intimacy of the setting allows some very powerful relationships to develop between the teachers and the students, and that's the key to the learning process," Chamberlain said.