Qualla: The Museum the Students Built

The Museum the Students Built: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 3.0. Ron Head had a theory about teenagers. He believed that if you gave high school students real responsibility, not simulated exercises or hypothetical scenarios, but actual authority over something that mattered, they would rise to it. In the late 1980s, teaching at Petaluma High School in Sonoma County, he got the chance to test that theory in the most unlikely way imaginable: a local millionaire's taxidermy collection was looking for a new home, and Head saw in it not a pile of mounted animals but the foundation of something that could change how his students saw themselves.

Image: Pi.1415926535 | CC BY-SA 3.0

The Museum the Students Built: A Millionaire's Dead Zoo

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stepheng3 (talk), Public domain. Hugh Codding was one of Sonoma County's most successful developers, the man who built much of Santa Rosa's postwar suburban landscape. He was also an avid hunter, and over decades he had assembled an enormous taxidermy collection, housed in a nondescript industrial building on Su...

Image: Stepheng3 (talk) | Public domain

The Museum the Students Built: From Bus Garage to Natural History

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Paul.h, Public domain. The collection quickly outgrew Head's classroom. The Codding family stepped in again, purchasing a new bus garage for the school district, which freed up the old one on the Petaluma High campus. That 9,000-square-foot concrete building, never designed to hold anything more charis...

Image: en:User:Paul.h | Public domain

The Museum the Students Built: Living Collections and Young Docents

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. Walk through the museum on a Saturday, when it opens to the public, and the experience is unlike any conventional natural history institution. The guides are high school students. They are not reading from scripts. They are docents who have taken specialized elective classes in w...

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0

The Museum the Students Built: A School Within a School

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mx. Granger, CC0. The museum operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, governed by a board of directors and sustained by community donations. Students who participate gain volunteer service hours, hands-on experience in biology and animal care, and practical business skills that most high schoolers never...

Image: Mx. Granger | CC0