A long-absent outdoor education program is mounting a comeback in Montana.

Project Learning Tree, an American Forest Foundation program, disappeared in Montana more than a decade ago. It re-emerged in 2008 when the program's first Montana facilitators in 12 years were trained near Greenough.

The facilitators were trained to teach educators and others who work with youths to use the Project Learning Tree curriculum. The program boasts lessons for students in kindergarten through 12th grade and is intended to do more than simply get children outside the four walls of the classroom.

Students are introduced to complex issues about natural resources and encouraged to decide for themselves what is right.

Montana's program owes its renewed vigor to several entities, including the national Project Learning Tree program, the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the U.S. Forest Service, all of which provided money to get the program started again.

After disappearing in the 1990s due to the lack of someone to coordinate the program and find funding, Project Learning Tree has found a statewide coordinator in Cindy Bertek, who works for Montana State University's extension forestry program in Missoula.

Since its resurgence in Montana last fall, there have been eight to 10 workshops to train teachers in Project Learning Tree, plus three facilitators' workshops. The most recent facilitator group received training at a two-day workshop at Lone Pine State Park near Kalispell.

About a dozen people attended the workshop, including Frances Erler, a music teacher at Helena Flats School.

At first glance, music and forestry might seem like subjects with little in common. But Erler sees plenty to connect the two, especially at the elementary level.

"Some of my favorite music activities tie in with environmental sounds and with cultural Native American things, like making instruments from natural materials," she said.

Her students think about how they can make similar instruments from things they find outdoors. They imitate sounds they hear outside. They hone their senses of hearing by listening to the music of the natural world around them.

Music and outdoor education also are similar in that they can help children remember what they learn, Erler said.

"If they hear it, feel it, move it," students are more likely to remember a lesson, she said.

The same can be true of teachers.

Erler's daughter Emilie, a kindergarten teacher at Glacier Gateway Elementary in Columbia Falls, attended a Project Learning Tree educators' workshop with her mother last fall. She said unlike some other workshops she has attended, Project Learning Tree encouraged participants to move around and actually participate in activities.

"We were outside and we did things," she said. "I personally, and I know kindergartners, learn much better when you have that attached to auditory and visual" learning.

Encouraging kids to use all of their senses is one thing that makes Project Learning Tree such a valuable resource for teachers, said Holly McKenzie, a Columbia Falls forester who has helped promote the program in Montana.

"The five senses are ultra-alert outside," she said.

While many kids are outside constantly, their activities tend to be highly structured and allow little room for actually exploring nature, McKenzie said. Children participate in everything from Little Guy Football to soccer to Little League, but few are learning about the world around them.

The same sterile structure has crept onto school playgrounds, where swing sets and other safe platforms have replaced trees and bushes. That's an unfortunate necessity these days, McKenzie acknowledged, but it may have come at the expense of children's connection with nature.

"We've taken nature out of our kids' lives for safety and insurance purposes," she said.

Project Learning Tree seeks to rectify this by getting kids outside. The program has lessons, many of which are meant to be taught outside, for students of all ages.

But the program does more than simply introduce students to the trees and flowers they've been missing or taking for granted. It teaches kids about issues related to the environment, and while it doesn't avoid potentially contentious topics, it presents information fairly, Frances Erler said.

"They take a balanced view of the line between preserving resources and wisely using resources," she said. "They look at the idea of conservation as not just being setting something aside at the park but how can we wisely use the forest resources and still continue to have forests for the future? I like their balanced approach to that."

Montana's Project Learning Tree program still needs facilitators and teachers who will implement the curriculum, which meets state curriculum standards, in their classrooms, McKenzie said. Those interested in the program may contact Bertek, the coordinator, at cindy.bertek@cfc.umt.edu or 406-243-4715.

For further information, visit www.plt.org.

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com