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If you can’t go to the jungle, bring the jungle to you. At least that is what students in Nicole Cervone-Gish and Debbie Bulmann’s classes are experiencing. Both teachers, through the help of a Red Apple Grant supplied by the Warsaw Education Foundation last school year, are able to bring a taste of the rainforest, and a taste of chocolate, to English as a second language students in their Madison and Eisenhower classes.

Cervone-Gish recently invited StaceyPageOnline.com to take a tour of her newly renovated classroom, now equipped with two, floor-to-ceiling wall murals depicting both a daytime and nighttime scene at a jungle watering hole. Cervone-Gish explained that the murals were purchased after she, inspired by a project Bulman was doing with her Eisenhower students, created a research project for ESL students in grades 4-6 involving chocolate, specifically, it’s production and origin.

The project asked students to assume a career of their choice, be it a veterinarian studying the affects of chocolate on dogs or a scientist, researching the process of chocolate’s creation. Students were then asked to research their topic and create  an article to be featured in a class magazine that, through the Red Apple Grant, would be professionally bound and finished complete with author biographies.

The $1,500 grant was able to cover even more for students. Cervone-Gish stated that the classroom was also able to purchase books on Jane Goodall.