Lawrence Spence: Beautifying Houston as he teaches love of nature
by Vicki Wolf

Lawrence Spence is keeping Houston beautiful and teaching children and college students about the environment as his life’s work. The native Houstonian grew up near Buffalo Bayou. “I have a natural affinity for Houston’s ecosystems: the bay, the bayous, the prairie and piney woods,” he says. As a child, Spence spent a lot of time outdoors camping, hunting fishing, and as a member of the Boy Scouts. “I have a lot of good experiences communing with nature,” he adds.

Spence says he knew from an early age he wanted to do environmental work and considered a variety of professions before deciding to become a teacher. “I wanted to do something about the way we live on the planet,” Spence recalls. He thought about engineering, building and designing things, but decided “things can always be misused.” He thought about going into law to stand up for the environment, but it seemed like “that would be too late.” “So I decided to be proactive and educate people. I wanted to show them what I see . . . how wonderful it is to be outdoors, and the importance of being good stewards and caring for what is around us.”

In 2001 he became involved in the Environmental Education Exchange (EEE), a network and forum for educators in the greater Houston area. The organization facilitates environmental educators in sharing programs, curriculum, events and news. Involvement in this network led Spence to meet his mentor, the late Duncan Ragsdale, an environmental educator and lobbyist – one of those essential people who work behind the scenes to get things done, according to Spence. “I learned a lot from him,” Spence remembers. “I certainly wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now if it weren’t for him.”

Through the EEE and Ragsdale, Spence found and started his first environmental education job as the coordinator for the Bayou Preservation Association to provide an after-school program for under-served inner city schools, called the Kids on the Bayou Program. Funding was provided to take the children on field trips during the day to outdoor venues for learning about the environment. From 2001 to 2004 Spence says the program served thousands of kids.

The program included a summer Bayou City Youth Leadership Convocation. The week-long camp invited students from Kids on the Bayou’ schools to come to Crockett Elementary for field trips that included service-to-action projects, littering clean-up, storm drain marking, tree planting and other projects. “We went out on a boat to see the Ship Channel and the Trinity River to see what an estuary looks like,” Spence says. “We let the kids get out and get wet, and bring the textbooks to life.”

At the end of the program each year, the students wrote letters to the Houston City Council about what they learned; what they had seen; what they liked or disliked. The students attended a city council meeting and read some of their letters to the mayor and council members.

After four years, Kids on the Bayou lost its funding. Spence says he loved working with the program and wanted to do more. Crockett Elementary School, a Houston ISD campus in the First Ward near Downtown, had been very supportive of Kids on the Bayou and the most active school in the program. Spence approached Crockett for a full-time job and was hired. He started teaching environmental science and became a certified classroom teacher, and has been teaching 4th and 5th grade since 2003. “I love it,” Spence says. “It’s a wonderful school. I don’t think I could have found a better place,” Spence adds. “Elida Troutman, principal of Crockett for 35 years is amazing and very supportive of environmental activities.”

The environmental education program now includes a science lab built by Spence and Wayne Olson, a “veteran” science teacher whom Spence calls his mentor for teaching. One of Spence’s major projects at the school is a school yard pond and native plant habitat. It took two-and-a-half years to build. Crockett has a small campus so the first challenge was where to put the pond. Thinking outside the box, they removed approximately 700 square feet of asphalt from an old parking lot, dug a hole, added a pond liner, 2,500 gallons of water, native terrestrial and aquatic plants as well as organisms like fish and insects collected by students. Spence calls it “rural redevelopment – bringing the country back into the city.” The pond cost approximately $55,000 after accounting for all of the in-kind services, volunteer hours and donations. The school paid $800. Of all the community resources contributed to the habitat and pond project, FACES of Change, a philanthropic program founded by Crescent Real Estate Equities, coordinated and provided the greatest effort The successful community collaboration that resulted in a beautiful school yard pond received the Keep Houston Beautiful “Proud Partners Award” in 2006 from Mayor Bill White.

Spence, and community partners are now putting finishing touches on a rainwater harvesting system and gazebo. Two 1,100-gallon cisterns connected to gutters of the gazebo and provide water the pond and habitat. Spence says Crockett will be the first HISD school in recent memory to harvest rainwater.

The greening of Crockett will continue with its new planned expansion if Spence has anything to do with it. He’s lobbying with the school district for new structures to be LEED (Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design)-certified.

Spence also is responsible for “Birds and Bats on the Bayou”. In 2002, as an undergraduate student in the Department of Natural Science at the University of Houston Downtown (UHD), Spence along with Professor George Farnsworth co-wrote and obtained a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as well as funding from the University’s Facilities Management Department to restore and enhance riparian habitat around the UHD campus, and to encourage more migratory birds, as well as bats. He organized students, faculty and volunteers to help remove invasive species and introduce native species of wildflowers, plants, shrubs and trees. “We’ve planted over a hundred trees and have sown more than 200 pounds of wildflower seeds on bayou banks every year since 2002” Spence says. This project also was awarded Keep Houston Beautiful Proud Partners Award in 2004.

Spence continues to work with the university to restore the bayou. “It’s a lot of fun because UH Downtown is on Main Street at the confluence of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous where the city began. There’s also the Interstate 10 and the Union Pacific and Amtrak Rail Line running through the campus yet we are outside planting wildflowers and trees,” Spence says. He enjoys getting inner-city college students and elementary school students in an urban area to reintroduce the natural world into a highly developed area.

“I just love it downtown,” Spence says. “It is so vibrant and exciting. You see cormorants, alligators, fish, and ducks, with a background of giant sky scrapers,” Spence says. It helps people get in touch with the local environment instead of just visiting it every now and then, according to Spence. “They might want to do something to preserve and protect it,” he says. Spence also hopes getting Crockett students involved with college students will encourages them to go to college.

“I hope I inspire people to take better care of the environment and appreciate the magnificence of earth, and to be more conservation minded,” Spence says. “I like to get kids away from video games, get their hands dirty and help them appreciate nature.”

Spence lives in Katy and commutes to Houston via carpool on the HOV lane or takes the Metro. He has a seven year old son, Walker, and an 18 month old son, Jackson. When he’s not teaching and organizing environmental projects, Spence enjoys playing guitar, backpacking, camping and hunting.

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