When the federal shutdown closed this national park, rangers took to the classroom

ROSS, Calif. — On a sunny morning, 17 students from a preschool here in Marin huddle as close as possible to furloughed interpretive park ranger Adrian Boone of the Muir Woods National Monument.

But this is no field trip. Instead, Boone has come to the outdoor classroom at The Ross Preschool, a half-hour drive from the park. He's part of a special program to bring furloughed rangers into local schools during the shutdown of the federal government, which caused Muir Woods to close its gates.

Their small faces are riveted as he passes around a leaf from a California bay laurel tree. "What do you think it smells like?" he asks them.

"Stinky?" suggests one small blond boy,

"Bubble gum?" asks a girl.

"A cookie!" shouts a child wearing a paper owl crown.

"The fun thing about this leaf is it grows in a redwood forest," he tells them. "The Native Americans would use this for medicine. If they had a cold and they were stuffed up, they would make tea with it."

Normally, Boone would be doing what national park rangers do everyday — protecting the park, helping visitors enjoy the outdoors, ensuring public safety and answering questions. But with the federal shutdown now dragging out to 29 days, some furloughed rangers are putting their skills to other uses, including taking environmental education to classrooms.

On this day, Boone has brought with him a container filled with the tools of his trade, designed to spark wonder and curiosity: a banana slug puppet, a laminated picture of a salmon, a jar filled with redwood seeds the size of chili pepper flakes. And it works: The children sit riveted throughout the 20-minute presentation, despite notoriously short preschool attention spans.

The program is run by Grasshopper Kids, a company that provides on-site enrichment classes and specialized teachers to schools in California and Colorado. It grew out of an interaction between co-founder Cris Tcheyan — a regular volunteer at Muir Woods — and Boone during an end-of-season party for park staff. Boone mentioned that he had been applying to be a substitute teacher to help pay the bills, but the process was moving slowly.

Tcheyan said she's always on the lookout for ways to bring extraordinary teachers into the classroom. "So I said if rangers are interested, we could get you into schools earning money. And he said, 'That would be great," Tcheyan said.

One week later, a Muir Woods ranger was a giving an elementary school assembly about redwoods at a local elementary school. And within two weeks, the rangers had completed more than 20 school visits, with dozens more requests for future lessons. "We've never seen schools move faster," Tcheyan said.

"It was so cool. There's nothing better than seeing kids see a slide with a blue whale standing next to a redwood tree — the tallest living organism on the planet. The blue whale is the largest animal on the planet, and doesn't even come close to the upper canopy!" Tcheyan said.

David Allen-Hughes, head of the preschool, said he learned of the program from a parent who spotted Tcheyan's post about the program on a local mom's group on Facebook, and decided it was a great fit for the school. "It's a win, win, win all around — support a ranger and give The Ross Preschool kids some additional education and inspiration and information," Allen-Hughes said.

After the 4-year-olds leave, a group of 3-year-olds arrive. "Let's stand up and be a redwood tree!" Boone told them. They reached out their arms to represent the branches, and wiggle their fingers like leaves in the wind. "When you lived with the dinos, you had to be tall so didn't get stepped on," he told them.

At the end of the presentation, the children followed their teachers back to their classroom. "Hope to see you in the woods!" Boone called after them.

Boone said the program has been a welcome respite from the furlough. "It's pretty awesome for us to still be able to talk about [the] connection [to nature]" and how important redwood trees are to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boone said. "We want to give these students just an idea that they live in a special area, and the role these trees play in sequestering carbon from our atmosphere."

Grasshopper Kids is not profiting from the rangers' lessons. It charges schools $200 for an hour with the ranger and keeps just $10 to cover the processing fee — the ranger takes home the remaining $190.

"That's an entire grocery haul and a tank of gas," said Riley Morris, who works as a seasonal interpretive ranger at Muir Woods. "It was a pretty immediate relief."

The shutdown has been been a major financial stress for Morris, who uses they/them pronouns. Before the Grasshopper Kids opportunity appeared, they had been planning to start leaning on their credit cards. "I have car insurance and a phone bill, and student loan bills. The government is shut down, but those payments aren't shut down. They keep accruing," Morris said.

At first, Morris wondered whether the children would still be interested in learning about redwoods without the "magic" of sitting inside a grove of the towering giants. At many school visits, the kids are sitting inside a classroom or auditorium. "But it's just been so cool seeing that when all of that is taken out of the equation, these kids are still just so totally glued to like the information that I'm sharing with them," Morris said. "You can just tell they're almost vibrating with excitement."

This year has been particularly challenging for national park staff and morale is low, said Mark Rose, a program manager with the National Parks Conservation Assn. Since January, the parks have lost one-quarter of workers amid the chaos of federal cuts, said Rose, even as more people than ever are visiting the parks. Remaining staff have been under great strain to fill in the gaps, with some scientists being asked to clean bathrooms, Rose said.

Now, they're facing indefinite furloughs or being asked to work without a paycheck during the shutdown, and the Trump administration is considering a mass layoff, Rose said. "This is just pushing it probably beyond the limit for some folks. As much as they love the parks, and as much as they want this job, you've got to have folks out there questioning whether this is still worth it at the end of the day."

Muir Woods was able to reopen for a nine-day period beginning last week, thanks to a donation from a coalition of concessionaires that operate the park's parking, cafe, gift shop and tours.

Justin Unger, senior vice president for strategy at ExplorUS, which operates the Muir Woods Trading Co.'s cafe and gift shop, said the company is donating funds to keep employees working, maintain concession operations and reopen the park for visitors. "We're proud to do our part, but we urge Congress to come together to reopen the government and restore stability for the people and places that depend on these treasured lands," he said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the National Park Service said in a statement that partners in several states have established short-term donation agreements to enable parks to remain open until federal funding is restored.

"The National Park Service will continue to keep parks as accessible as possible during the lapse in appropriations. Critical functions that protect life, property, and public health will remain in place, including visitor access in many locations, law enforcement, and emergency response," the spokesperson said.

The donated funds from the concessionaires will enable Muir Woods to remain open at least through Friday.

Boone has returned to work part-time until then. But he has loved teaching young children in schools so much that even once the shutdown is over, he plans to continue teaching through Grasshopper Kids on his days off.

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This article is part of The Times' early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed .