Dr. Jane Goodall  Visits GICS

Friday, April 4, 2008 was a fantastic day here at Gibson Island Country School!

After months of planning, the school was finally ready for it's first Roots & Shoots Fair, an event to be attended by world-renowned scientist Dr. Jane Goodall.

Pavilion-style tents were set up outside in case of inclement weather, and the auditorium was readied to showcase wonderful displays by Roots & Shoots groups from Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D. C.

32 schools sent representatives to GICS for this event, and there were exhibits as well from environmental groups such as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the MD Zoo at Baltimore, the National Zoo, the Maryland Association of Environmental and Outdoor Education, the Echo Hill Outdoor Education Center, and the Chesapeake Environmental Conservation Center.

The highlight of the day's event was the presence of Dr. Goodall.  She arrived at 10:30, and after some preliminary introductions, made her way to one of the tents to present her speech.

The audience was spellbound for the entire hour, listening to Dr. Goodall talk about her life and her work.

Dr. Goodall then toured all the displays in the auditorium and classrooms,...

...and gave a special talk to GICS' younger students as well.

Our school truly was honored with her presence, and students will long remember the soft-spoken and remarkable woman who visited with us that day.

More Photos

Back to Top

From The Maryland Gazette, Saturday, April 5, 2008, p. A1

In the shadow of Jane

Noted primatologist Jane Goodall visits program she inspired at Pasadena School

by ALLISON BORG, Staff Writer

   It sounded a little like an African jungle in the tent set up along the banks of the Magothy River.

   Led in a chorus by noted primatologist Jane Goodall, hundreds of students from Gibson Island Country School and about 15 (sic) other area schools let loose loud, wailing chimpanzee calls.

   "That's pretty good, " Dr. Goodall said with a chuckle, smiling at students, teachers and parents as they snapped pictures of her.

   The world-renowned scientist, known for her long-term studies of chimpanzees, was at the private Pasadena school yesterday for its Roots and Shoots Fair.

   Dr. Goodall founded the Roots and Shoots youth environmental awareness program in 1991.  There are now about 8,000 Roots and Shoots clubs across the world, including one at Gibson Island.

   The state deemed the school a Maryland Green School in 2005 for its extensive environmental science program.  On Friday, students in Roots and Shoots clubs in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D. C., set up displays in the school gymnasium to share what they've learned about the environment.

   "It's exciting to be at a school where Roots and Shoots has grown so splendidly," Dr. Goodall said.

   Fifth grade teacher and Roots and Shoots adviser Maura Farrall, a self-described devotee of Dr. Goodall's teachings, wrote to the Jane Goodall Institute in Washington begging for her idol to come out and speak to Gibson Island students.

   "I've written to her a lot since I was in the sixth grade," said Ms. Farrall, whose  teacher that year gave her a copy of Dr. Goodall's 1971 book, "In the Shadow of Man."

   "That book changed me as a student and a person.  I thought more.  I studied more."

   The 74-year-old Dr. Goodall shared with the crowd the story of how she became a scientist.  Her love of animals started early, she said.

   At barely 5 years old, the young English girl traveled with her family to a farm.  While helping to gather hen's eggs, she started to wonder just where they came from.

   "This is my first really vivid memory," she said.

   So one afternoon, she sneaked into the hen house, buried herself in straw and watched and awaited for a hen to lay an egg.

   "There's the making of a little scientist," Dr. Goodall told students.

   "It's curiosity.  It's asking questions, and if you don't know the answer to something, you try to find out."

   Her dream as a child was to go to Africa, live with the animals there and write books about them.

   Her peers told her she was crazy.  And because her family had no money to send her to college, her dream seemed a long way off.

   But it came true, she said, when a family friend invited her on a trip to Kenya.  She waited tables to save up money to go, and when she was there, met famed anthropologist Louis Leakey.

   He was impressed by her knowledge of African wildlife, and he hired her as a secretary at age 23.

She eventually accompanied him on a dig in East Africa, and in turn he arranged for a wealthy American businessman to fund her early research on chimpanzees.

   "I thought, who on earth was going to give money to an untrained girl from London to study chimpanzees?" Dr. Goodall said.

   But she got enough money to study the chimps for six months, and it was then that she observed a chimp fashion a fishing rod out of a branch.

   "They are much more like us than anyone ever dreamed," said Dr. Goodall, who later earned a doctorate in ethology from Cambridge University in England.  "They kiss, they embrace, they hold hands, they swagger."

   Her research continues today.  In 2010, it will be 50 years since she began studying chimpanzees.  It's the longest unbroken study of any single species, Dr. Goodall said.

   Students called her an inspiration.

   "She got to see something nobody else got to see," said Luke Charlton of Pasadena, a sixth-grader at the Boys' Latin School of Maryland.

   A Gibson Island alum who participated in Roots and Shoots as a student there, he and other former classmates were at the fair sharing their research on rain gardens, which are designed to catch rain water and improve the quality of storm water runoff.

   Rebecca Bell, state environmental education specialist with the Maryland Department of Education, presented Dr. Goodall with a governor's citation, and awarded Gibson Island Country School and Environmental Education Month proclamation.  Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon also presented Dr. Goodall with a certificate of honor.

Back to Top