Nick Wall was a little late getting into the forestry game, so-to-speak.
That may seem strange coming from a high school kid taking the forestry program at Carihi, but now that he’s had some time in the program, he wishes he’d caught the bug earlier.
So when his teacher, Jason Kerluck, asked for ideas for final projects this year, Wall pitched the idea to host elementary school kids and show them some of what they’ve been learning all year.
“It took me a long time to realize how much I like forestry,” Wall says. “I didn’t realize it until I took Kerluck’s class, so I wanted to let the kids see it earlier. And this, I thought, was a better way to do that. It’s not like in class seeing it in books or on a slideshow.”
It’s certainly not.
Set up around the soccer field at Carihi are various stations with fun games and activities for the kids to try out, such as the gear relay – where they have to get dressed up in all the safety gear required in the field and race around – and the fire suppression station, where the kids get to try out the back-mounted tanks carried by forestry workers to douse fires.
The kids, however, get to use them to knock over pyramids of empty cans.
“We’re also taking them on walks in the forest and showing them the different plants and trees and stuff, and keeping it fun,” Wall says.
“It was such an awesome idea,” Kerluck says Tuesday afternoon, looking around at the bustle of activity on the field. “It’s a project-based course and I try to let them do whatever they want in terms of coming up with projects. Usually for final projects the kids put together a powerpoint or a poster, which are great, but I love that they came up with this and wanted to incorporate other people and make it fun.”
Kerluck says he was expecting around 200 students from across the district to show up to take part, from both elementary and middle schools.
Wall is keeping an open mind about where his future will take him, but he’s pretty sure he’ll be in forestry in some capacity now that he’s found a love for it.
“I’m planning to go to university to get my RPF (registered professional forester),” he says, “but mainly I just want to jump in both feet first and see where it goes. There are so many different facets in forestry – it’s not just people chopping down trees and cutting up the wood. It’s all these different little jobs that go together to make a bigger picture. I just want to get myself into that bigger picture somewhere.”
And he’s hoping maybe some of the younger kids who came by on Tuesday will think about doing that, too.
