Pick And Shovel

Bauxite Junior High students go into the field, take tools in hand, and learn the project of planting pine seedlings, an increasingly big one in Saline County. More than two million seedlings have been ordered for planting this Winter season.

Reading left to right: Suzanne Kinney, Mr. Ed. Stephens, Glen Reed, Patti White, Dickie Rolleigh, Mr. Ed Stephens, Reba Sue Baxley, Gary Moore, Austin Ledbetter (Soil Conservationist for Saline County), Paula Lee, Karen Brown, Marty Sharp.

A realistic, on-the-ground, into-the-dirt understanding about conservation and its value is being acquired by the pupils in the Social Studies Classes of the Bauxite Junior High School.

To emphasize study on conservation, Teacher Edward Stephens completed a special course at Arkansas State Teachers College last Summer on a scholarship from Alcoa through the Saline County Soil Conservation District.

The pupils have planted pine seedlings on a tract owned by the Bauxite School District and considered as of little value at this time except for growing trees. The pupils carried the seedlings in buckets, they measured the spacing for planting, they dug the holes, put in the plants and packed the dirt around them.

Mr. Stephens believes the tree-planting projects will be of immense value to the pupils. "By the time they get into the Twelfth Grade, the trees will be up so that they can see what they have done," he said.

The planting of 5,000 seedlings by the pupils by hand, a job requiring a considerable amount of exercise, will be followed next year by the planting of 10,000 more seedlings by machine on the School District's unused 20-acre tract.