Barrie Students Learn a Lot Raising Monarchs

Emeka Egwuagu, 10, left, and Noor Khleif, 9, watch teacher Cathy Carpenter tie yarn to the chrysalis to move it, above. At left, a butterfly's identfication sticker is visible. (Photos By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)

The small black chrysalis with its tiny band of bright gold dots hanging from a silken thread was the center of attention in teacher Cathy Carpenter's class at the Barrie School in Silver Spring.

Students, as well as a small video recorder perched on a stepladder, were keeping a close watch on the chrysalis suspended inside a clear plastic hanging pouch, waiting to see when the monarch butterfly inside would emerge.

As fifth-grader Luke Murray checked on the chrysalis, through which part of the butterfly's orange-and-black wing was visible, he explained what would happen once the butterfly broke through.

"The butterfly is all crippled and all that, and then it starts sunning its wings so it can warm up its wings and not be crippled any more," he said.

Next, the butterfly would be placed inside a "butterfly condo," a small white tabletop tent, so its wings can finish drying. "If I was a butterfly, I'd like to live there. It's like a big mansion," Luke said.

In the class that Carpenter teaches with Judy Yormick, butterflies rule the fall semester. From a tiny caterpillar through its metamorphosis into an elegant butterfly, the monarch is the subject of lessons ranging from biology to geography in the combined fourth- and fifth-grade class at the private school.

"Every day I come into the classroom, I go straight to see if a new chrysalis or caterpillar has come out," said fourth-grader Jessica Lauman-Lairson, 9.

For the second consecutive year, the class is raising and releasing monarchs for the butterflies' annual fall migration to Mexico for the winter. The project, which includes tagging the butterflies with identification numbers, is part of a national conservation project sponsored by Monarch Watch, an educational outreach program based at the University of Kansas.

School officials say that participating in the monarch conservancy program is a perfect fit for Barrie's Montesorri curriculum, which focuses on a multi-sensory, student-centered approach to education.

"We saw an opportunity here for our program to effectively exercise several of its fundamental principles," said Tim Trautman, head of the school. "If you step back a little bit, what is going on here is a nice, tidy package of the many important dimensions that we value in education."

Animal Planet, a subsidiary of the Discovery Channel, saw an opportunity in the class project. A television crew from the cable channel recently spent the day filming the class for a six-episode series featuring schools across the nation committed to conservation efforts. "Spring Watch USA" is scheduled to air in April.

While the video camera monitored the black chrysalis, Carpenter and the students reenacted the life cycle of the butterfly for the TV crew, from the staged arrival of tiny caterpillars from Monarch Watch to the release of several adults ordered for the filming.