Skip to content

Kids walking across a park

Program at Port of Oakland teaches Oakland students about the environment

on November 22, 2013

Amid the flow of semi trucks entering and exiting the Port of Oakland, an unlikely vehicle navigates through the traffic. A yellow school bus with 50 seventh graders is en route to the public park located smack dab in the middle of the industrial landscape of massive cranes and cargo containers.

Stepping Out Stepping In, an environmental education company located at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park, has provided nature studies and become a field trip destination over the past three years for Oakland public school students from kindergarten through seventh grade. The program, which gets funds from the Port of Oakland, integrates information on the industrial history of the bay with lessons on stewardship of its ecology.

Tara Reinertson, owner and director, teaches lessons on the San Francisco Bay Estuary through interactive learning and hands-on activities. To help students learn about the wetlands and wildlife, Reinertson and her team of interns lead exercises like sediment sampling or bird watching.

Seeing how the kids react to nature is the draw for Kirk Wust, an intern for Stepping Out Stepping In.

“The kindergarteners get so excited when they find a crab in the sand,” he says. On a recent day, students from Melrose Leadership Academy came to learn about labor and trade in Oakland. First the students looked at photos of the port from decades ago and learned about the history of the Pullman porters, the first all-black union. Later they ran a relay race to illustrate international trade.

Many of the students were surprised to learn that the process of making a pair of jeans from growing the cotton to stitching the fabric takes place in several countries.

The goal of the program, Reinertson says, is to increase Oakland students’ access to the San Francisco Bay Estuary and to educate them about its ecological systems. She said she hopes the 2,000 students who participate in her program each year leave with a sense of stewardship of the nature that surrounds their city.

Yogi Francis, another intern, said she believes educating the younger generation about the environment will create positive change. But she was surprised to find that teaching the students has made a dramatic impact on her own life.

“I feel I have much more confidence,” she said. “Like I’ve grown from a three-foot-tall tree to a ten-foot-tall tree.”

1 Comment

  1. lee sanders on December 2, 2013 at 3:53 pm

    They should take the kids to explore the PORT OPERATION. Look to the future for jobs!!!



Oakland North welcomes comments from our readers, but we ask users to keep all discussion civil and on-topic. Comments post automatically without review from our staff, but we reserve the right to delete material that is libelous, a personal attack, or spam. We request that commenters consistently use the same login name. Comments from the same user posted under multiple aliases may be deleted. Oakland North assumes no liability for comments posted to the site and no endorsement is implied; commenters are solely responsible for their own content.

Photo by Basil D Soufi
logo
Oakland North

Oakland North is an online news service produced by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and covering Oakland, California. Our goals are to improve local coverage, innovate with digital media, and listen to you–about the issues that concern you and the reporting you’d like to see in your community. Please send news tips to: oaklandnorthstaff@gmail.com.

Latest Posts

Scroll To Top