America's Ancient Teachers: Exploring Old-Growth Groves in Secondary English and Biology Classrooms

The Forest Close At Hand

Over the past 200 years, most of the forestland growing in the eastern United States has at one time been logged for timber, cultivated for agriculture, or developed into urban and suburban spaces. Though millions of wooded acres still exist in national forests, parks, and preserves, very little of that land should be considered undisturbed or old-growth. Given these realities, it may be surprising to learn that groves of very old trees still survive in American cities and suburbs. According to author and biologist Joan Maloof (2011):

Maloof’s broad definition will serve in this chapter, too. Indeed, the woods that the chapter showcases have been “left alone” to grow very old.

This chapter will highlight three of these ancient groves–one in Georgia, one in Tennessee, and one in Ohio–in an effort to illustrate how teachers and students in secondary schools could study these distinctive places. In addition, this chapter hopes to illustrate how a knowledge of these places could foster an appreciation for both scientific curiosity and reading and writing about American landscape.

Why study old-growth woods and introduce students to their marvels? From the inception of the United States, American writers have been fascinated with the fecundity of this continent’s landscape. In the late eighteenth century, St. John De Crevecoeur penned lines whose spirit would serve as a rallying cry for new emigrants: