When Harry Hurst science teacher Barry Guillot talks about the Wetland Watchers, he usually gets pretty animated, but it’s hard to imagine he ever envisioned himself as a cartoon in a book about environmental heroes.
The book, which can be found at libraries and stores throughout the country, tells the true story of 12 people across North America who have done great things for the environment. Heroes include a teenage girl who figured out how to remove an industrial pollutant from the Ohio River, a Mexican superstar wrestler who works to protect turtles and whales, and a teenage boy from Rhode Island who helped his community and his state develop effective e-waste recycling programs.
Chapter 10 in the book deals with Guillot and his Wetland Watchers. He is the only teacher featured.
“It is such a huge honor to be recognized in this fashion,” Guillot said. “I hope that in some way our story will inspire other teachers and students to learn more about service-learning and get involved with their community the way my students have.”
Guillot is responsible for founding the Wetland Watchers, which is a service-learning program that was started in 1997 to immerse students in science while learning about the value of the wetlands.
Over the years, the Wetland Watchers have participated in tree planting, water-quality testing and litter removal and have also adopted 28 acres of land in the parish.
That land is now designated as Wetland Watcher Park.
For six straight years, the program has been recognized as an American Leadership Model Project by the Lieutenant Governor’s Louisiana Serve Commission.
The author of the book, Harriet Rohmer, heard about the Wetland Watchers after reading an article about Guillot on the Teacher Heroes site of The George Lucas Educational Foundation. Rohmer said she read the whole profile and was “totally amazed.”
“I wanted to include a teacher, especially a middle school science teacher, because teachers are so important in shaping the lives of kids and thereby determining what sort of society we’re going to have 15 or 20 years down the road,” she said. “Then I read about Barry, and I knew immediately that he was a model teacher.”
Rohmer was reading the profiles to specifically find a teacher who was making a difference in both the classroom and the community.
“His work of helping kids protect the wetlands around New Orleans struck me as exciting and important – and something that all kids could relate to, even if they’d never seen a wetland,” she said.
In fact, Rohmer ends the book with a section called “How You Can Get Involved,” which encourages kids to look for projects that could help their communities, to learn how nature works, and to help with clean ups and tree plantings.
“Following the examples of people like Barry and his students,” Rohmer said.
In the chapter dealing with the Wetland Watchers and Guillot, the teacher appears as both a cartoon and in a real photo. There are also two photos that feature a total of eight Harry Hurst students.
The book, which retails on Amazon.com for $13.25, can be found in local libraries and book stores in the surrounding area.
Be the first to comment