Topic: Tule Elk Park: A Cautionary Tale

Presenters: Lynne Juarez

It’s about children and the environment, always an important focus for Lynne Juarez, who worked for 33 years with the San Francisco Public School District. Her B.A. was earned at University of San Francisco, and she has an M.A. in early childhood education from San Francisco State University. In 1991, the year of the Gulf War, she was working in an Early Education Program in a school that served over 300 children aged three through the third grade. Many images of that war were flashed on the TV screen each night…the black smoke coming from the burning oil fields, the eerie photos of soldiers, faces obscured by gas masks. The images that were seared into Lynne’s brain were those of the many oil soaked birds. In the face of so much death and destruction, she felt compelled to do something. But what? And so began a journey that lasted seven years, the building of Tule Elk Park. The school with an asphalt playground was turned into a park, and named after the animals that used to roam there. She takes great pride in creating something life-affirming despite the time of war. In her retirement she went to Namibia to work with young adults to work with lower income students who wanted to teach early childhood education.  

Friends at the Institute for Postmodern Development in China encouraged Lynne to write a paper to be delivered at a Conference in China in 2014. Although a family emergency prevented her from doing so, a companion traveler did make the trip and presented the paper to Chinese educators interested in children and the environment.  Lynne herself delivered the paper in 2015 for the Cobb Claremont conference on Seizing an Alternative.  A resident of Pilgrim Place in Claremont, she is still active with its Environmental Concerns Committee, including creating booths at its annual festival to educate young people about environmental concerns.

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