Instilling a culture of caring and fieldwork in a Montessori adolescent program

by editor | Sep 20, 2025 | Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Environmental Literacy, Experiential Learning, Inquiry, Place-based Education, Questioning strategies, Student research, Teaching Science

Instilling a culture of caring and fieldwork in a Montessori adolescent program

by Jonathan Erickson
Metro Montessori School
Portland Oregon

One thing that drives most educators is the hope that we are guiding students who will ultimately care about the work that they do and care about the world in which they do it. Remembering this should be a sort of thesis for all of the planning and action that follows. The work we do as teachers should help students develop into people who value themselves and the effort they put forth.

Through this writing I hope to answer the questions: “How do we best instill a culture of caring in the learning community?” and “How does fieldwork and ecology connect to other areas of social development?”

Teachers and Guides need to strive to create immersive social and scientific experiences for students, just as we would if we hoped for them to gain mastery a new language. We need to make space for students to dive deeply into valuable work so that they will not feel like “work” is just a four letter word, but will realize that it can feel good and serve a greater purpose.

We’ve all stumbled onto those perfect moments where we observe students in flow, where they are finding joy in their work and satisfaction in the process as much as the result. How can we make these moments more commonplace?

I am working towards a cultural shift at my own school. Saying it like this implies that the movement would be larger than one teacher and bigger than one class. After all a culture outlasts a tenure. I believe that we can intentionally plan and drive this change by designing and supporting long-term, project-based fieldwork rooted in discussions of current events and personal values.

Caring for natural resources and spaces

After completing a seminar reading about learning to see, this student was inspired to walk slow and carry a hand lens.

My students are adolescents. As such, they are beginning to view themselves as part of a larger world community, and they are getting more and more emotionally invested in what they see and hear from their peers, parents, social media, and the news. To be frank, what my students witness every day directly or indirectly is pretty frightening and truly merits mediated discussion. So we allow time in our learning community for students to debrief what the world is throwing at them. That said, as the adults in the workspace, we must impart a sense of hope for positive change, as young adults can easily fall victim to despondency and gloom.

The above paragraph could be a jumping off point for scheduling more service work, getting politically involved, becoming a “Green School”, discussing and understanding mental health issues, or countless other initiatives. Any work in the school that is inspired by hope for a better future is meaningful work, and hopefully we can make time for all of it. When it comes to the environmental crisis facing our world however, the entry point is in ecosystem experiences. Students will care for what they understand, and they will move towards understanding with ecological field study.

Practical lessons for us all

How can ecological field study find a place in an already full curriculum? That is just one of the challenges that I and others have faced while trying to include big projects and studies in our yearly work cycle.

Working in an independent Montessori adolescent program means that there is an administrative and institutional commitment to deep work. In my case it also means flexibility since, while we are accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, we aren’t beholden to state, district, or school board mandates. Dr. Montessori placed emphasis on following the innate interests and natural tendencies of children; which we’re doing when we take them outside and ask them to be curious. This is what we are doing when we allow students to take weeks or longer to study something that may not be discovered in a textbook or online.

A student discovering that moss isn’t just moss. Samples will be used to see if these mosses support different CO2 emitting organisms and which contribute most to the pH of runoff.

Onboarding

Student-driven projects of depth have always been a part of our students’ experience, so I don’t want it to seem like this piece is missing in our curriculum, but ecological field study is a new avenue, and I do not want it to seem ephemeral; I want it to run through all the work we do in a school year. Since I work as part of a team, it takes good communication and collaborative planning to pull this initative through.

We are not a large ship, but we are still a ship, and when we alter direction we need more than one person committed to the change. Because scheduling fieldwork will likely impinge on the plans of other guides and teachers, loop them into the work and get them excited about the possible application and integrations between science, math, and literacy disciplines. I think that most teachers like to get excited.

We are early in the shift, but I have arranged for co-teachers to join me in a field science professional development opportunity next summer hosted by the Diack Ecology Education Program and Jane Goodall Environmental Middle School. This 3-day workshop will give us the chance to do the work of our students; transforming our curiosity into a scientific question and collecting data and observations to possibly support our hypotheses. We don’t get to practice what we teach often enough in the classroom as we get bogged down in student management, record-keeping, and the like. It will be refreshing to feel the way our students feel when they are immersed in nature and are driven by curiosity. This workshop will also give the teaching team a chance to collaborate and find ways to make fieldwork a reality with our school’s unique situation.

How to plan

The culture of caring surrounds the individual work cycles like an atmosphere. Ensuring that the work cycle will align with the program goals, such as they were stated in the above thesis, means students will experience continuity in teaching philosophy and predictability in their work.

My teaching team plans “work cycles” not discrepant units, since they continue and flow into each other through the years. Students are already familiar with the ways that knowledge and skills find application across the work day. For example, understanding how plants rely on mycorrhiza and nutrients might inform the potting soil that they buy for the school garden. Understanding how human activity affects runoff might alter how students discuss environmental case studies in ethics.

Even with a willing culture and total buy-in from all the invested parties, time is still at a premium every day in the learning space and with its scarcity, there is a need for intentional planning. My goal with this schoolwide shift is to be able to have work flow into work in logical and obvious, though sometimes unexpected, ways. I want interrelationships between content lessons and activities to feel mutualistic in nature.

To be certain, there are countless ways that educators organize their ideas and put them into action; when I draft a learning cycle plan of this “big work,” I consider three periods or stages. The first period contains the key lessons and the important foundational content that the future work will build upon. The second period contains the independent student work and research, while the third period finds students presenting their work in some formal manner. All this is followed by professional reflection and the chance to begin again with a new cohort. Students also have the opportunity to continue inquiry work in our learning spaces for multiple years which allows them to build on and enhance their previous study.

Using tools that we have in our STEM space, students are inspired to analyze forest soil and compare with compressed soil of the trail. They will see if forest soil can host more nematodes, an organism that they are excited to have learned about.

First Period

Note to self: You know what’s best, but listen to student feedback as you enter into content lessons. If students get to be drivers of the learning, they are invested in the outcome.

This year, I wanted to begin with an extended amount of time just spent in nature, partially unstructured and casual: a sort of “site safari” to see what is and imagine what is possible. This was a time for work to call out to the student. These outings can be somewhat challenging for my school since we are located in downtown Portland, Oregon, but they are not impossible. It is worth it to take time to visit the outdoor workspace if just to remind students that these areas exist and need to be preserved.

This past fall, the entire student body came to the forest for journal work, readings, break-out groups with specialists, observations, discussions, chances to practice scientific illustration, etc.. We de-briefed the visit by creating a list of questions and curiosities. All of the students and adults ended the day getting something different, a personal mix of learning and asking. This was the jumping off point for content and skill lessons.

Following that initial immersion into nature I offer the following key lesson because they seem the most useful for students as they become more intentional about the direction of their work:
What is a scientific question? What is a variable?
What can be measured?
Biotic and abiotic factors
Interspecific relationships
Trophic levels and energy flow
Levels of organization; What is life?
Taxonomy and classification
Evolution and speciation

I like to clarify for students early on that our goal of inquiry in nature is partially to gain understanding but mostly to build appreciation and keep or develop a sense of wonder. Set a manageable goal since to fully understand what happens in nature is beyond our human capabilities. Appreciating the complexity of local ecosystems and acknowledging the minutiae of countless unfolding stories seems achieveable and leads to the caring that is our ultimate goal with students.

The value of the activities and lessons should be clear to the learners. When purpose is veiled for too long, student motivation and thus caring can quickly be extinguished.

Breaking an ecosystem into its components asks students to reconsider what life looks like. Sometimes it looks like witch’s butter.

Second Period

After the majority of key lessons have been given and the basis of ecology built, students can follow their personal interests into individual curiosity and research. Most students will need guidance as they start this process, and some will need it throughout. As the ego-bearing adult it can be hard to release control of these personal investigations because, inevitably, students are going to ask unanswerable questions of you and choose to take you down some untrodden paths, figuratively, maybe.

A Montessori Guide (teacher) can sometimes act as a teammate in this work, sometimes they are a part of the learning environment, and most often they are an observer of the child. Making observations helps the adult be what the child needs during a sensitive period, that is, a perfect moment for learning something new.

Students enter into this second period armed with a scientific question. Many times the scientific question leads down a rabbit hole, again figurative, maybe. If we had our way, these independent inquiries would run their full course and could unfold over months or longer. In reality, we sometimes have weeks and students might have to get comfortable with indefinity. Students will understand that some data sets will be left incomplete, and the work may fall onto the backs of others down the road. This is one point of having a fieldwork culture in place, so that picking up the reins on a long-term study becomes commonplace for students. Just like humans are part of ecosystems, students are part of the study of ecosystems for a limited time and and benefit from collaboration over time and with peers.

Students enjoy the unexpected things that they find in the forest, like this rootwad and nurse log, almost as much as they enjoy doing work side-by-side with friends.

Third Period

Whether an investigation runs its course or is interupted by circumstance, there needs to be a logical end-point so that students can move on to other purposeful work. The third period is all about sharing their work with others.

These days it seems that there are more ways for students to share their work with the world than ever before. Anyone lucky enough to work in a middle school will know that sometimes adolescents want to be pretty goofy with their final product. I remember when a group produced a carbon cycle music video in the style of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Ultimately however, I ask that they also present their findings more formally, some of the following modes would work for me:

Produce a video
Present to the neighborhood
Publish an article
Produce a podcast
Create a blog
Send results to a professional for feedback
Organize an event with parents and families
Go to a science fair

Adolescents gain a sense of what Dr. Montessori has termed valorization from presenting to peers and others outside the community; they gain a feeling of capability that is a vital experience for those who are becoming adults. This is a chance to see the mastery of students gained through the work with real questions solved through observing in the outdoors.

The wrap

Our time outside is part of a pedagogy of place that implies that this experiential learning will lead to both empathy and action. So a culture of fieldwork and a culture of caring go hand-in-hand. As students begin to see interdependence in nature they better understand interdependence in their community and society. They may begin to see their impact on peers more readily after observing and measuring the impact of different ecosystem members or factors. They will at least have a framework for understanding impact.

We have to come to terms with the fact that we have all signed up for work that never ends. We can hope that it gets easier by building a culture where our work and the work of our students has purpose, meaning, and value. I find comfort remembering that with all the flaws in my planning and delivery of ecology concepts, students will always grow when they are outdoors making discoveries alongside their peers and with supportive adults. To see the best results in the students that we work with, we should put them in the learning environment that nature prepares for them. As Dr. Maria Montessori states in her book From Childhood to Adolescence, “When children come into contact with nature, they reveal their strength.”

Words as true as when they were written nearly 80 years ago.

Some Good Short Seminar Readings for Students of Ecology

“Clouds in Each Paper” from The Other Shore by Thich Nhat Hanh
“Learning to See” from Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
“Partnerships” from The Forest Unseen by David George Haskell
“Fungi and the Anthropocene: Biodiversity discovery in an epoch of loss” by A. Pringle, E. Barronn, and J. Wares
Selected excerpts from “Entangled Life,” by Merlin Sheldrake

Jon Erickson is a Montessori Guide and Middle School Teacher and has worked with adolescents in Alaska and Oregon for 15 years. He currently works with students in Portland and enjoys the opportunity for side-by-side learning and hands-on work. He teaches STEM and plans curriculum for classes with names like “Fisheries Management and Watershed Studies,” “Cascadia Rainforest Ecology,” “Bicycle Physics, Use, and Maintenance,” and “Makerspace/Woodshop Creations.”

Expeditionary Learning: Exploring Healthy Forests

by editor | Sep 18, 2025 | Adventure Learning, Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Environmental Literacy, Experiential Learning, Forest Education, Inquiry, Student research, Sustainability, Teaching Science

Expeditionary Learning: Exploring Healthy Forests

By Val McKern and Greg Goodnight

What is a healthy forest? That is the question that Kettle Falls Elementary School fourth graders have been grappling with all winter. In order to examine this question, fourth grade teachers Sally James, Sydney Potestio and Judy Galli have designed an expedition with carefully scaffolded projects for their students. Through these in-depth, service-learning projects, students have been engaged in reading, writing, math, science, social studies and technology. In Kettle Falls we firmly believe that it takes a village to educate a child and we count on a cross curricular approach of teachers and many experts to make any expedition a success for our students. Our priority is creating engaging expeditions that have rigorous learning for ALL students.

Kettle Falls Elementary: an expeditionary learning school

An expedition is the format Kettle Falls Elementary uses to combine adventure and service with learning state standards. Each expedition has standards strategically embedded in fieldwork. The healthy forest expedition will combine many “I can” learning targets based on state standards, with snowshoeing, animal tracking, trail cameras and forestry. In the end, students will deliver PowerPoint presentations to the North East Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) as an authentic audience for their service learning work product. The expedition will provide an exciting and adventurous outlet for student learning and assessments on rigorous state standards. As an Expeditionary Learning School, Kettle Falls Elementary believes that expeditions are the primary way of organizing curriculum.

The subject matter of a learning expedition is a compelling topic derived from content standards. Expeditions feature linked projects that require students to construct deep understandings and skill and to create products for real audiences. Learning Expeditions support critical literacy, character development, create a sense of adventure, spark curiosity and foster an ethic of service. They allow for and encourage the authentic integration of disciplines. (Expeditionary Learning Schools Core Practice Benchmarks p.8.)

This learning expedition began as all expeditions begin at Kettle Falls Elementary. The staff went through a careful study of the new Washington State standards and determined the “priority standards” at each grade level. The standards are then written as long-term learning targets. Once these standards were determined, teams researched case studies that could become the focus of the learning expeditions. The life science standards addressed focused on life cycles, animal structures and behaviors, food webs, ecosystems and human impacts as the center of the expedition.

Literacy is embedded with in the expedition. Priority learning targets are written based on the standards of reading and writing. Reading comprehension strategies and the traits of writing are the focus of these targets. A content map is designed that assigns long term learning targets to each of three expeditions through out the school year. Each expedition runs for eight to twelve weeks.

Learning targets are at the heart of our work. There is clear criteria for posting and referencing learning targets school-wide. Long- term targets, project targets, and scaffolding steps are organized so that students can track their achievement during the daily debrief. We emphasize “learning together, but assessing independently.” Anchor charts that hold the thinking of the class are posted near the targets. The anchor charts will collect information that makes the learning target clear, whether it is knowledge or meta-cognitive thinking. All students are independently assessed on all learning targets.

Kettle Falls Elementary as a 21st Century School

Expeditionary Learning Schools set an expectation for service and authentic work. Kettle Falls Elementary teachers create expeditions that foster service in authentic ways.

Benchmark 3: B. Authentic Audiences
1. Products often meet an authentic need and have an audience and purpose beyond families or the classroom teacher.
2. Some of the products are particularly motivating because in themselves they are acts of service.
(Expeditionary Learning Schools Core Practice Benchmarks p.13.)

We are a Learn and Serve Grant recipient, which has helped us focus on the service aspect of our expeditions. This grant gave teachers release time to write rigorous expeditions and make the community contacts necessary for authentic service. It also supported the expedition through fieldwork and materials for a new expedition.
We knew that this expedition was an outstanding opportunity to educate our students in sustainable education. It meets many of Jaimie P. Cloud’s EfS Frameworks:

Responsible Local/Global Citizenship — The rights, responsibilities, and actions associated with leadership and participation toward healthy and sustainable communities. Students will know and understand these rights and responsibilities and assume their roles of leadership and participation.

Healthy Commons — That upon which we all depend and for which we are all responsible. Students will be able to recognize and value the vital importance of the Commons in our lives, their communities, and the places in which they live.

Multiple Perspectives — The perspectives, life experiences, and cultures of others, as well as our own. Student will know, understand, value and draw from multiple perspectives to co-create with divers stakeholders shared and evolving visions and actions in the service of a healthy and sustainable future locally and globally.

A Sense of Place — The strong connection to the place in which one lives. Students will recognize and value the interrelation- ships between the social, ecological and architectural history of that place and contribute to its continuous health. (Cloud, p. 172-173.)

The North East Washington Forestry Coalition (NEWFC) agreed to partner with Kettle Falls Elementary School. This expedition reaches each of these components of Cloud’s framework. It is the basis of an expedition with an authentic purpose, service, purposeful fieldwork, multiple perspectives and rigorous content.

Kettle Falls Elementary Bangs monitoring project

Three KFE classes will be engaged in a hands- on learning experience that includes in-class preparation and learning and fieldwork designed to teach them about the life cycles of natural systems, sustainable resource management, and community collaboration. The project will include wildlife, tree, and plant monitoring within the Bangs Mountain Wildland Urban Interface project on the Colville National Forest, as well as presentations and instruction from school and community experts in the field and in the classroom, including members of the Northeast Washington Forestry Coalition. The students will work with the Coalition to complete a final report in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, documenting their monitoring work and educational experience with photos and written reporting. The final report may be posted on the Coalition’s web site, and a final press release may be prepared for local newspapers to share the outcome of the project with the broader community. Derrick Knowles, Education Outreach, NEWFC.

NEWFC is a local organization that believes in demonstrating the full potential of restoration forestry to enhance healthy forests, public safety, and community economic vitality. Because Kettle Falls is community that relies on the timber industry to survive, we wanted to create an expedition that would have many viewpoints. We felt that NEWFC would have the multiple perspectives within the organization that would make our study to compelling to students and community members, since NEWFC is comprised of members who come from the timber industry to those in Conservation Northwest. Our students are seeing that there is not one “right” answer to their question of “What makes a healthy forest?”

Kettle Falls Elementary fourth grade expedition: the stories tracks tell

Case Study One: Indicator Species of Bangs Mountain

Our Learn and Serve Grant gave a team of six staff members the opportunity to participate in a SEA (Service, Education and Adventure) training this fall. This adventure included learning to track with Tom Murphy of Edmonds Community College and the LEAF (Learn-n-serve Environmental Anthropology Field) school. This so engaged the teachers that we were determined to give our students the same opportunity. Murphy was able to create an alterna- tive winter course that brought 12 college students to Kettle Falls for a week. During that time, the LEAF school taught the students how to recognize tracks and gaits of our local animals. The focus was on five animals: whitetail deer, turkey, snowshoe hare, lynx and coyote. These animals were chosen with help from the Forest Service because of their status as indicator species for the Bang’s Mountain area. Students spent time in the forest that week, learning to track, photograph tracks, and measure tracks. They also learned to set trail cameras along trails in order to capture photos of the elusive animals.

Students from Kettle Falls High School Wildlife class with teacher Jono Esvelt participated in each of these activities sup porting the fourth graders throughout this expedition. They also took on the task of writing “field guides” for the fourth graders to use in their work.

This project focused on the learning targets of

I can independently sort animals by the structures and behaviors that help them survive in their environment.
I can independently list 4 parts of an animal and describe how the parts help the animal meet its basic needs.
I can independently generalize from multiple forms of text to learn about forest animals.
I can independently elaborate using details and/or examples about one forest animal.
I can edit for capitals against the class capitalization chart.

Students learned about each animal through predicting structures and behaviors by analyzing a collage of photos and You Tube videos. Predictions were recorded before reading field guides and predictions were confirmed or not. Once the recording sheets were completed, the students wrote expository papers on the survival structures and behaviors of each animal. These were combined to create PowerPoint slides that will be included in their final product, some with actual photos of the tracks or animals that were photographed at the Bangs Mountain site. The good news was that some animals were captured by the trail cams, but some remained elusive!

Case Study Two: Food Webs of Bangs Mountain

This project really focused on the interdependences within the forest ecosystem. Learning targets in this investigation focused on giving students the knowledge to be able to complete the narrative prompt:

You are a wildlife biologist researching animals on Bangs Mountain. One of your jobs is to report to the community of Kettle Falls the stories the animal tracks of an indicator species told you while doing your fieldwork. To do this you will need to describe where the tracks were found and your inferences of what the tracks are telling you about that animal’s daily life:

I can describe the interdependences in a forest ecosystem.
I can explain how a forest ecosystem impacts animal population.
I can independently generalize from multiple forms of text to learn about forest ecosystems.
I can write a narrative with a clear beginning, two events and a clear ending.

In order to make this narrative realistic students needed to understand the actual role of a wildlife biologist. Learning about careers while in engaging expeditions opens our students’ eyes to the world of possibilities. Students continued their fieldwork, checking their trail cams, snag counts (their first monitoring experience), searching for tracks and other sign of life in their plots and were prepared for snowshoeing (though there simply wasn’t enough snow for them this year). Using the reading skill of “generalizing to understand” helped student comprehend the interdependence of the forest and was built through reading, photography, experts, media, data and many simulation games. After each activity students recorded “new learning” on anchor charts that build the content schema. They also recorded their use of the skill “generalizing” on anchor charts to show their ability to be meta-cognitive about comprehending new material. Students were able to use the information gathered from the multiple sources to write their narrative.

Case Study Three: Bangs Mountain as a Changing Ecosystem

Now that the students have developed a level of knowledge about the interdependence of forests they are ready to move on to the changing ecosystem. This is when they really become experts and begin to look at the many stakeholders of the forest. Their fieldwork becomes very data based. Through skill building in P.E. they learn about pacing. Each child is responsible for pacing off 104 feet, using a compass to keep their lines straight, they determine a half acre plot for their team. They use a tape to measure their accuracy after pacing and the corners are marked on the GPS so that their plot can be found on Google Earth. Students are now collecting data on the canopy by measuring open and covered areas. They have learned to use transect lines during their monitoring. This data is part of the baseline that will be used in the study. They identified three plants in the understory and did a plant count of their plot. Their study of the animals in their plot also continued, with data from tracks and trail cam photos. The most common track and photo taken was squirrels, though they are not one of the indicator species. Students found little evidence of the lynx at their plot. Animal population changes will be one indicator of increased health of the forest over time.

During this project students learned about many changes that can happen to forests over time. The learning targets for this project are:

I can independently describe how onepopulation may affect other plants and/or animals in the forest ecosystem.
I can independently evaluate one population in different forests, determine which will thrive and give clear reasons.
I can independently describe three ways that humans can improve the health of the forest ecosystem.
I can independently assess the author’s effectiveness for a chosen audience.
I can independently organize my writing.

This means:

I will write an introduction, supporting details using examples, and conclusion in an expository writing.

Each day of this project focuses on a change in the forest ecosystem. Some are changes that have taken place at the Bangs Mountain Project and some are changes that could eventually happen. All students receive the same reading each day, but they read the articles for a different purpose: natural or man-made changes, population changes, or gradual or rapid changes. Each student becomes an “expert” on their article. The students then “jigsaw” their articles once they have recorded the important information. The student experts then share out in small groups, creating a real need for students to comprehend and analyze their text. Special Education and Title I students are pre-loaded with vocabulary and content before the article increasing their ability to fully participate while in class. Once the information has been analyzed students come together to complete anchor charts where they record the changes and determine if human impact was positive or negative. They also determine the author’s purpose and if the author was successful in delivering their message.

By the end of this case study they have a thorough understanding of thinning, prescription fires, recreation management, forest flu and other healthy management issues.

We believe that reading is only one vehicle to understanding new ideas. Fieldwork, media and experts are also key components to creating powerful learning tools. Experts from the timber industry, Forest Service, Conservation NorthWest, and Department of Fish and Wildlife have all volunteered to work with our students, ensuring that students are learning realworld applications of the knowledge. Each of these experts will not only share their expertise on managing forests and their per- sonal perspectives of what makes a healthy forest, but also about their careers.

The students will complete this project with a simulation from Project Learning Tree, “The 400 Acre Wood.” Students will determine the actions taken to manage a forest much like their plots on the Bangs Mountain Project. This project has a balance of Vibrant Economy, Healthy Environment, and Equitable Society, as recommended by The Sustainable Design Project Teacher Manual. (Wheeler, Bergsman, Thumlert 2008.)

The Final Presentation of “What is a Healthy Forest?”

The final project is a culmination of all of the data that the students have collected while completing this project. Data is compiled in a variety of ways. The ani- mal monitoring is a graph of the sightings caught on the trail cams, the plant monitor- ing is a graph as well, both done on Excel. The canopy is drafted on graph paper, indicating the cover and open space. There is also the map from Google Earth, indicating each plot for future reference and to gauge changes over time. This work is gathered in a Power Point to be presented to NEWFC at a future meeting.

Kettle Falls Elementary: expeditionary learning and 21st century intertwined

Our students had the opportunity to become engaged in their local forest, gathering a respect for the land, observing the interdependence and understanding the decisions made by others that use our forests. Students were able to meet rigorous learning targets and assessed independently on each target. They collaborated to create authentic projects that reach beyond their school walls.

The expedition included many different modes of learning during this project that are key to Heidi Hayes Jacobs’ Tenets for Purposeful Debate leading to Content Upgrades:

• A personal and local perspective is developed and presented in the content area, where natural and viable.
• The whole child’s academic, emotional, physical and mental development is thoughtfully considered in content choices.
• The possibilities for future career and work options are developed with an eye to creative an imaginative directions.
• The disciplines are viewed dynamically and rigorously as growing and integrat- ing in real-world practice.
• Technology and media are used to expand possible sources of content so that active as well as static materials are included. (Jacobs p 31).

Through compelling expeditions students at KFES achieve many 21st century outcomes. Students build strong habits of work, through both performance (traits that enable students to perform to their potential) and personal relationships (traits that enable students to be good people and community members). They are motivated to learn. Students believe that they have the ability to meet their targets, have clear targets that they can self-assess their progress against, and are connected to their school through the work they do. We believe that academic achievement is increased when students are engaged in learning. Through authentic expeditions like “The Stories Tracks Tell” students build life and career skills. Real world problems increase students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills. The use of technology opens the classroom to wider world, with meaningful examples of the work our students are doing. Our students increase their understanding of 21st century themes such as environmental literacy. (Hulleman, Hartl & Ciani 2009). Through compelling expeditions our students are engaged, supported and held accountable to high standards.

References
Hulleman, C., Hartl, S., & Ciani, K. (2009). Character, Motivation, and Engagement in Expeditionary Learning Schools, Review of the Relevant Literature and Available Measurement Instruments. Nellie May Education Foundation. Expeditionary Learning Core Practice Benchmarks (2003). Garrison, NY: Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound.

Jacobs, H. H. (2010). Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Wheeler, G., Bergsman, K., and Thumlert, C. (2008). Sustainable Design Project Teacher Manual. Olympia, WA: Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Greg Goodnight is superintendent at Kettle Falls School District.
Valerie McKern is principal at Kettle Falls Elementary.

Homeschooling and the Establishment of a Research Forest

by editor | Sep 15, 2025 | Adventure Learning, Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Environmental Literacy, Experiential Learning, Forest Education, Homeschool, Inquiry, Outdoor education and Outdoor School, Place-based Education, Questioning strategies, STEM, Teaching Science

A Natural Fit: Homeschooling and the Establishment of a Research Forest

by Jess Lambright

For those open to an alternative educational path, a classroom with no walls or desks but instead trees, meadows, and streams, offers abundant opportunities for scientific exploration. My journey in outdoor education started by home-educating my own children, but soon expanded to include other students and families. Although making everyday a field day comes with certain challenges—such as very wet, cold winter days—it has also shown me how adaptable young people are, and how many spontaneous and fascinating learning opportunities present themselves when you commit to regular immersion in the natural world.

I have come to appreciate the vast range of possibilities in which students can acquire knowledge. While some homeschooling families follow packaged curriculum closely and monitor carefully to make sure their children meet state standards each year, others chose a less structured approach called unschooling, rooted in a deep trust for kids’ natural tendency and ability to learn. This philosophy can free a motivated young person to dive deeply into an ocean of learning powered by autonomy, inspiration, and infinite possibilities.

Connecting to place and stewardship of land

A multi-disciplinary unit study called My Tree and Me, where each student was connected with a specific tree which they measured (diameter, height, age) conducted secondary research about the species, wrote poetry, and created art with materials from the tree. One student decided to give his final poster presentation from the branches of the Cascara tree he had spent so many hours with.

The first outdoor program I hosted involved an established group of kids spending an entire day outdoors, once per week, for over four years. Week after week and year after year we returned to the same 40-acre woods from the first days of fall through the start of summer. It was common for our group to wander through the forest, without a destination or agenda, letting our innate curiosity lead the way. Wandering freely, with open eyes, allowed us to get in touch with what excited us and created opportunities for true discovery (Young et al., 2010, 56).

It filled me with satisfaction to watch the deep connection to place that developed over time in each of us. Monuments and landmarks, like a circle of giant old moss-covered stumps towards the southwest corner of the forest, acquired names and memories and provided comfort and familiarity when they were encountered. We would experience the wet meadow as a place that requires rubber boots to traverse in the wet months, a beautiful explosion of white flowers and soft grasses that dance in the wind in the summer, and a sea of delicate purple camas flowers in the spring. One year we returned to the same sit spots week after week, recording changes in our journals as spring brought all the growing things to life.

Students pause to examine a pile of feathers they discovered while exploring the woods on a rainy day. The group came up with a series of questions about what happened and brainstormed ideas about how they could investigate further to potentially find answers.

Spending time on a particular piece of land, through the seasons and years, inevitably leads to a sense of kinship and creates an urge to protect and enhance the natural environment. It’s been rewarding to teach students about which plants are non-native and potentially harmful to the local ecosystem, then see them step up as guardians of the land. When we wander through the woods, sometimes they spot a pocket of invasives and if we’re lucky enough to be carrying long-handled loppers, the team of weed warriors can quickly level a patch of Himalayan blackberry. In addition to studying and exploring, offering students an opportunity to actively participate in land management elevates their sense of purpose and deepens their connection to the natural world.

Full Family Learning

Homeschooling naturally leads to multiple ages and families all learning together. In the early days of our homeschool outdoor program the adults often observed activities and supported logistics. But over time it became clear that we truly were a mixed-age group of learners and explorers. Treating everyone as learners equally can have the effect of empowering young people. Sometimes kids master skills quickly. teaching what they’ve learned to adults. And sometimes the best exchange comes not from experts, who have a deep and longstanding understanding of a concept- but those who have recently experienced the gift of insight.

Mixed age learning is a mutually beneficial relationship fostering growth in multiple ways. Adults sometimes shelter in the security of topics they already understand and avoid venturing into areas less familiar. Conducting scientific inquiry in nature is ideal for having a high ceiling and a low floor: everyone knows something, and no one knows everything! Cultivating a growth mindset, by creating an atmosphere where mistakes are celebrated as learning opportunities, and where having a question is as valuable as having an answer (Boaler, 2015, 11), pairs beautifully with immersive study in nature.

A team of researchers determine the percent meadow knapweed present in a one-meter plot square by examining each of 100 smaller squares for the plant of interest.

Authentic Curriculum

Each day that I meet a group of students in the natural world, I come prepared with a plan for that day. Sometimes my plans are elaborate and detailed, and sometimes they are less specific and open to input from my fellow adventurers. But without exception I am mentally prepared and openly delighted to be upstaged by the unexpected. Whether it is locating a dead porcupine after noticing an unusual smell, being suddenly pelted by large hail, being startled by the arrival of the cacophonous noise of a murder of crows, or being circled by two deer so distracted in their mating dance that they fail to notice us; being fully present for nature’s dramas is my top priority.

After waiting over a year for the soft tissue to decompose, students collect and sort bones from a deer that died of natural causes near the Bear Creek Wilderness.

One day, just as the families were arriving at the Bear Creek Wilderness, a truck with two wildlife professionals pulled up to examine a deer laying in the horse pasture adjacent to our meadow. Curious, we gathered to ask questions about what might have happened. When they offered to let us keep the recently deceased animal, we gladly accepted- and spent the day dragging it across the meadow into the woods, securing it with paracord, and setting up our two trail cameras to watch what would happen.

Each week we checked on the deer, and everyone brave enough to venture near got to experience first-hand what decomposition looks and smells like. The camera footage revealed a series of fascinating dramas involving a bobcat, opossums, neighborhood dogs, and finally turkey vultures. A year and half later we carefully collected the bones and spent hours sorting and reconstructing a full deer skeleton. Finally, we tried our hands at making bone tools. In my experience, the best learning opportunities are not planned or expected. But when we build regular rhythms and practices, it is possible to “lay the groundwork for the outbreak of authentic curriculum” (Sobel, 2008, 81).

Cultivating scientific inquiry

Students work to match specific leaves to nature journal pages. Each student found a leaf while wandering through the woods, then recorded details of that leaf in their nature journals using words, pictures and numbers. The leaves were collected, then each student selected a new leaf and found the corresponding journal page.

Getting to know a place, including its seasonal changes, provides a useful perspective when it comes to asking research questions. An invaluable tool to record and remember discoveries, questions and observations is the field notebook, or nature journal. Developing the habit of collecting data with pencil and paper while exploring the natural world takes ongoing dedication, is deeply personal, and will certainly evolve through the years if one continues the practice (Canfield, 2011, 187-200). Nature journaling techniques that involve close examination of specimens in order to draw them, often reveal details that would have been overlooked with a quick glace or photograph. Indeed, to truly get to know a specific plant species it is hard to imagine an activity more educational than carefully drawing each of its parts.

Foundational to scientific inquiry is the research question, or asking questions within the realm of science. There are plenty of valid and interesting questions that one might ask while pondering the wonders of nature, and it’s important not to shut down inquiry when a question like, “Does it make this tree happy when I climb it?” arise. If limited to knowledge bound by science, one may miss rich worlds of philosophy, spirituality, intuition, and other ways of knowing. Still, once we are ready plot our scientific course it’s useful to remind students that questions should be measurable (Laws & Lygren, 2020, 90-93).

At the start of a student-led wildlife study, one researcher, who had taken time to carefully read the manual and test out the equipment, teaches the other students how to label their memory cards and set up their trail cameras. This project was made possible by a generous grant from the Diack Ecology Education Program.

Research Methods

When guiding young people into the world of field research it is helpful to start with basic techniques and big picture, cross-cutting concepts. Keeping track of important details in a field notebook and not forgetting to record obvious but key information like the date and location takes practice before it becomes routine. Collecting data can be time consuming, but sometimes trying to interpret sloppily recorded field notes can lead to tedious and frustrating hours at home. Finding a doable and interesting research question, taking into account confounding factors, and dealing with the disappointment if all the hard work to apply different treatments on an invasive plant all result in similar outcomes, requires a certain level of maturity and commitment.

Digging into a full-fledged research project requires determination, perseverance, and time, but it is possible to introduce students to the exciting and fun parts without getting bogged down by details. I recently taught a research methods class to elementary and middle school students with the goal of having hands-on experience with sophisticated research equipment without requiring data analysis or report writing.

We practiced collecting samples, and at first, we recorded in our field notebooks all the important metadata. Inspired by collection and observation, but limited in time, we then simplified the process to maintain interest and focus. For the rest of our forest walk we collected whatever samples caught our eyes- and mentioned what we would record if we were doing a research project- but kept it fun and quick so we still had time to investigate them at the end with magnification. Keeping data collection fun and exciting for younger students makes for a useful introduction to scientific inquiry and sets them up for conducting their own research in the future.

Students collect carbon dioxide and pH data from a patch of earth using equipment funded by the Diack Ecology Education Program during a research methods class with Wild Alive Outside.

Student-Led Research

In my experience, homeschoolers have a low tolerance for contrived activities, busywork and doing things for a grade. Any activity, assignment or project needs to be authentically meaningful. While it may be hard to force them to fill out a worksheet recording what we just discussed, they often thrive with open-ended activities and projects they can direct. It’s important to provide the appropriate scaffolding, and offer examples, but I have been impressed by how quickly and enthusiastically students construct their own research projects. As a mentor, I sometimes struggle with finding balance between requiring them to do something ‘right’ and encouraging critical thinking along with a safe place to fail, each of which are valuable learning experiences. Allowing students to take ownership in the learning process enhances the development of scientific thinking.

Once, a student created an elaborate plan to attract birds for his trail camera research project involving dead trees, peanut butter, and bird seed. There was tangible disappointment when the resulting images revealed many more rodents than birds, but it led to a new series of questions as well as an understanding about wildlife activity in that area. Field science is almost always iterative in nature, with new questions emerging from initial data and, ideally, the opportunity to inquire further and collect more data. With guidance and partnership students integrate information while maintaining natural curiosity.

Expanded Educational Support

Last year our outdoor program, Wild Alive Outside, received its first infusion of grant-funded scientific equipment. The Diack Ecology Education Program financed a set a trail cameras for our students to study wildlife activity at the Bear Creek Wilderness. Access to high-quality equipment has been a game changer for our little research group. Students felt empowered to design their own experiments by having full control over one of the trail cameras and two high-capacity memory cards. In addition to learning what wildlife passed through the area of the forest or meadow they selected, they gained experience with organizing and analyzing digital data. For some, it was their first exposure to spreadsheets, and others had to push their edges to patiently examine each of hundreds of photos. After months of data collection and conducting secondary research on one of the many wildlife species they discovered, they created posters to present their findings.

Students carefully measure the water in the rain gauge to determine rainfall over the previous week. Data is later reported to the CoCoRaHS website as part of a nationwide citizen science initiative.

For several years now, each day on the land begins with checking the rain gauge. Because we only visit once per week, we often have several inches of rain to carefully measure and record in the notebook. This simple ritual wakes up scientific thinking: “remember to look straight on before taking a reading,” connects us to what’s been happening while we were away: “no wonder there’s standing water in the meadow,” and gives us access to site-specific long-term data. At the end of the water year, shortly after the start of autumn, we can look back at the data we’ve collected, compare it to previous years, and make predictions for when the rains might come that fall. Additionally, we report our data through a sophisticated citizen science program called CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network with thousands of other citizen scientists across the country. I have found students take data collection quite seriously when they know they are part of a larger community of scientists, all doing their best to produce accurate results.

After tackling a large patch of invasive blackberry bushes, the Weed Warriors celebrate their contribution to protecting the wet meadow in the Bear Creek Wilderness.

The Bear Creek Wilderness and Student Research Forest

My program design is to plant the seeds for creating a student research forest where young people will have ongoing opportunities to learn scientific methods of field research and contribute to an ever-increasing body of knowledge through their own efforts. Just as the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest welcomes graduate students and long-term ecological researchers and has amassed a wealth of knowledge and data about that site, we aim to support young emerging scientists with open minds and creative ideas to connect with place, nature, and make meaningful contributions to science within a community of knowledge seekers. Participants gain foundational skills together as they engage with the land, utilize scientific tools, grow as learners, and share knowledge with each other.

References
Boaler, J. (2015). Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students’ Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching. Wiley.
Canfield, M. R. (Ed.). (2011). Field Notes on Science and Nature. Harvard University Press.
CoCoRaHS – Community Collaborative Rain, Hail & Snow Network. Retrieved January 18, 2024, from https://www.cocorahs.org/
Diack Ecology Retrieved January 26, 2024, from https://www.diackecology.org/
H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest. Retrieved January 26, 2024, from https://andrewsforest.oregonstate.edu/
Laws, J. M., & Lygren, E. (2020). How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention. Heyday.
Sobel, D. (2008). Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators. Stenhouse Publishers.

In 2019, Jess Lambright started a nature school for homeschool families where once per week kids and parents spend all day outside learning wilderness skills, exploring, developing naturalist knowledge, conducting field studies, and connecting with nature, themselves, and each other. She founded Wild Alive Outside in the summer of 2023 with the goal of getting more youth outdoors to discover wonder and inspiration in the natural world through science, outdoor skills, and wilderness connection.

Restoring a School Habitat as Project-based Learning and Inquiry

by editor | Sep 15, 2025 | Conservation & Sustainability, Data Collection, Experiential Learning, Inquiry, Integrating EE in the Curriculum, Schoolyard Classroom, Student research, Teaching Science

Scotch Broom Saga:

Restoring a School Habitat as Project-Based Learning and Inquiry

by Edward Nichols and Christina Geierman

Since the advent of No Child Left Behind, many schools have turned their focus inward. Students rarely leave the classroom. Teachers often deliver purchased curricula that attempt to make meaningful connections for students. Lessons may contain examples from the real world, but these exist only on paper and are not explored within a real-world context. This article describes how an elementary school (K-5) on the southern Oregon coast addressed a real-world problem– the presence of the invasive Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) plant on the school campus. It began as a plan to improve an outdated writing work sample but became a school-wide project that allowed ample opportunities for students to authentically practice research skills while developing a sense of value for the world around them.

North Bay Elementary School is located in the temperate rainforest of rural Oregon, just a few miles from the Pacific Ocean. It serves about 430 students, over 95% of whom qualify for free and reduced lunch. The property was purchased many decades ago when the lumber mills were booming and so was the population. It was built as a second middle school, and the grounds had plenty of room to build a second high school. But the anticipated boom never came, and the property eventually became an elementary school surrounded by a small field and a 50-acre forest. At some time in the past, an enterprising teacher had cut trails through the forest for student access. When that teacher retired, the trails largely fell into disuse.

The Seed of an Idea

In Oregon third-grade students must perform a writing work sample each year. The topic in North Bend, which had been handed down from previous teachers, was invasive species. The class would work together to write a paper on an invasive species found in Florida, then apply their writing process knowledge to produce a sample on an Oregon invasive. They were given three curated sources created by using a lexile adjuster on the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife website. This project existed in a relative vacuum– invasive species were not mentioned before or after the work sample. Its only connection to the rest of the curriculum was the writing style. The students were interested in the topic and produced decent work, but Edward Nichols thought they could do better. He had long noticed multiple patches of Scotch broom growing just off the school playground. This invasive plant out-competes native ones and does not provide food or useful habitat for other native species. He wondered if they could do something with this to enhance the writing work sample and turn it from a stand-alone project to something more meaningful.

Fertile Ground

That summer, Edward attended a Diack Training held at Silver Falls State Park. In addition to providing excellent professional development on how to perform field-based inquiry with your students, it is also a place where you get to meet other educators with similar mindsets.

A chance conversation with Julia Johanos, who was then serving as Siuslaw National Forest’s Community Engagement and Education Coordinator, led to the idea of having an assembly on invasive plants for all students at North Bay Elementary. Edward was also a member of the Rural STEAM Leadership Network, and he met Jim Grano in their monthly Zoom sessions. Jim is a retired English teacher who is now focused on getting students outside. He has helped several schools in the Mapleton area start Stream Teams, which got students outside restoring stream habitat and collecting data on salmon. He routinely led student groups into the field to remove English ivy and Scotch broom. Edward invited him to help lead a similar event at North Bay.

The Big Event

After weeks of planning, North Bay held a service learning day on March 17, 2023. The kickoff happened the day before when Julia Johanos led an engaging school-wide assembly on why invasive species are bad for our environment. The next day, the entire school participated in removing Scotch broom from the forest. The students came out one grade band at a time in 45-minute shifts. Each grade had a different task. Kindergarten students pulled the seedling Scotch broom by hand. Slightly larger stalks required “buddy pulls”, where two students worked together. Fourth and Fifth grades used weed wrenches to remove bigger plants. Alice Yeats from the South Slough NERR briefed each group on safety. And dozens of parent volunteers kept everybody safe. The Coos Watershed Association donated native plants, and the second grade came out at the end of the day to plant coyote bushes and red flowering currant, native strawberries, Oregon grape, and a variety of evergreen trees in the spaces the broom used to occupy. After school, Christina Geierman, a science teacher at North Bend High School, brought high school volunteers from the Science National Honor Society to help pull the biggest broom of all and clean up after the event.

Sustaining the Excitement

It is a tradition at North Bay to have a variety of fun activities for the last day of school. This year, in addition to the stalwarts of bubble soap, bicycles, and bounce houses, the event also contained a Scotch broom pull led by Jim Grano. Students could do whatever activity they chose, and many students chose to remove the broom from the edge of the playground. A representative from OSU Extension was also there, showing the kids how to make bird feeders, and folks from the South Slough NERR returned to lead nature hikes. The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians (CTCLUSI) also ran a booth and taught students about conservation and had them play a native game called nauhina’nowas (shinny), which involved using tall, carved sticks to pass and catch two balls connected by twine.

A second, school-wide Scotch broom pull occurred this past fall. Edward also started a Forestry Club at North Bay, which featured guest speakers from the Bureau of Land Management and had the students planting more native species. Plans are underway to have a school-wide pull each spring and a forestry club each fall to plant native species just before the rainy season hits.

Applying Their Knowledge

Students participating in the Scotch broom pull apply their classroom knowledge in various ways. In mathematics, they record and tally the number of plants removed, practicing authentic math skills. They observe and document the plant’s lifecycle during the pull, connecting classroom biology lessons to real-world applications. North Bay uses the Character Strong curriculum to address social-emotional learning, and the broom pull allows students to apply traits like perseverance, cooperation, and service. Students can immediately and directly see the results of their efforts when they go outside for recess. This gives them a sense of pride in their accomplishments. There have been many reports of students educating their parents about why Scotch broom should be removed from the environment and even a few tales of students removing invasive plants from their own properties.

While participating in the Scotch broom pull, the students met a variety of scientists and conservationists. They were able to make a connection between this sort of work and future job opportunities. Jim Grano showed them that, if you feel passionately about something, you can make a difference as a volunteer. Alice Yeats, Julia Johanos, and Alexa Carleton from the Coos Watershed Association showed them that women can be scientists and do messy work in the field just as well as men can. Although it will take many years to tell, we hope that a few students will be inspired by this work to pursue careers in natural resources management.

Into the Future

This past fall, North Bay was named a NOAA Ocean Guardian School. This means that NOAA will provide the funds necessary to carry this project forward and expand it. The grant is renewable for up to five years. This spring, a group of students from North Bay will host a booth at Coos Watershed’s annual Mayfly Festival. There, students will present their project to members of the public and urge them to remove Scotch broom and other invasives from their own properties.

This spring, the North Bend High School Science National Honor Society (SNHS) will partner with North Bay students for a Science Buddies Club that will take place after school. Thanks to a Diack Grant awarded to Christina Geierman and Jennifer Hampel, the SNHS has a variety of Vernier probes and other devices that can be used to collect data in the forest. In the first meeting, the North Bay students will guide the high schoolers down the forest trails and describe their Scotch broom project. The SNHS members will show them how the probes work and what data we can gather. The guiding question will be, “Why do Scotch broom live in some areas of the forest, but not others?” The students will come up with hypotheses, focusing on one variable like temperature, light availability, etc. and then work together to gather and analyze the data. Students will present their data in a poster at the Mayfly Festival and possibly the State of the Coast Conference.

Members of the North Bend High School Science National Honor Society and family volunteers have reopened the trails through the forest. Plans are underway to expand these trails and partner with the CTCLUSI to create signage. The forest is being used by the school once again. Classrooms that earn enough positive behavior points can choose nature walks through the forest as potential rewards. Dysregulated students are taken down the path to calm them. Increasing student and community use of the forest is one of our future goals.

Edward Merrill Nichols is a 3rd-grade Teacher at North Bay Elementary in North Bend, Oregon. Growing up on the southern coast of Oregon instilled in him a love of and respect for his natural surroundings. With over six years of experience, he fosters student growth through engagement and respect. Edward actively engages in STEM education, leading Professional Development sessions and extracurricular clubs. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master of Science in K-8 STEM Education from Western Oregon University.

Christina Geierman has taught physics, biology, and dual-credit biology at North Bend High School for eleven years. She is a published scientist, a proud union member, a decent trombone player, and a world traveler. She enjoys spending time outside with her husband, Edward Nichols, and dog, Aine.

Empowering Elementary Students through Environmental Service-Learning

by editor | Sep 7, 2025 | Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Environmental Literacy, Experiential Learning, Learning Theory, Questioning strategies, Service learning, Sustainability

Empowering Elementary Students through Environmental Service-Learning

by Eileen Merritt, Tracy Harkins and Sara Rimm-Kaufman

“We use electricity when we don’t need to.”

“When we use electricity we use fossil fuels and fossil fuels pollute the air and fossil fuels are nonrenewable.”

“We use too many non-renewable resources to make energy.”

“One problem that we have with the way that we use energy is that we often taken it for granted, leaving lights on when it’s unnecessary, and plugging in chargers without using them.”

“We are literally putting pollution on the blanket of the earth!?”

The problems listed above were identified by fourth grade students in the midst of an environmental service-learning unit. These powerful words, and many similar ideas shared with us by other fourth grade children, show that children care a lot about our planet. They notice when we waste resources, pollute our air, water or land, or cause harm to other living things. Their concerns must be heard, to motivate others to confront the environmental crises that we are facing today. Greta Thunberg has recently demonstrated how powerful one young voice can be, mobilizing people around the world to take action on climate change.

How can educators help students develop skills to be change agents, offering creative and feasible solutions to problems they see around them? Service-learning is one powerful way to build students’ knowledge and skills as they learn about issues that matter to them. Recently, we worked with a group of urban public school teachers to support implementation of environmental service-learning projects in their classrooms. In environmental service-learning, students apply academic knowledge and skills as they work together to address environmental problems. High quality service-learning, according to the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC), provides opportunities for students to have a strong voice in planning, implementing and evaluating projects with guidance from adults and engages students in meaningful and personally relevant service activities that address content standards (NYLC, 2008). We designed Connect Science, a curriculum and professional development program, with these goals in mind (Harkins, Merritt, Rimm-Kaufman, Hunt & Bowers, 2019). As we have analyzed student data from this research study, we have been inspired by the strength of conviction that students conveyed when they spoke about the environment and the creative solutions they generated for problems they noticed. In this article, we describe key elements of lessons that fostered student agency (see Table 1). First, two vignettes below exemplify service-learning projects from two classrooms.

In another classroom, students launched a campaign to reduce the use of disposable plastic containers at their school. They made posters to educate others about single-use plastics, explaining how they were made from petroleum (see Figure 1). Students and teachers in their school were encouraged to take a pledge to use reusable water bottles, containers and utensils in their lunches. Sign-up sheets were placed near posters around the school. Several hundred people took the pledge.

What both groups have in common is that they participated in a science unit about energy and natural resources. In the first part of the unit, they discovered problems as they learned about different energy sources and how these energy sources produce electricity. They began to recognize that fossil fuels that are used for transportation, electricity production and plastic products, and that their use causes some problems. This awareness motivated them to take action. Later in the unit, each class honed in on a specific problem that they cared about and chose a solution. Below, we summarize steps taken throughout the unit that empowered students.

1 Choose an environmental topic and help students build knowledge

Students need time to develop a deep understanding of the content and issues before they choose a problem and solution. Many topics are a good fit for environmental service-learning. Just identify an environmental topic in your curriculum. Our unit centered around NGSS core idea ESS3A: How do humans depend on earth’s resources? (National Research Council, 2012). Students participated in a series of lessons designed to help them understand energy concepts and discover resource-related problems. These lessons can be found on our project website: connectscience.org/lessons. Fourth grade students are capable of understanding how the energy and products they use impact the planet (Merritt, Bowers & Rimm-Kaufman, 2019), so why not harness their energy for the greater good?

There are many other science concepts from NGSS that can be addressed through environmental service-learning. For example, LS4.D is about biodiversity and humans, and focuses on the central questions: What is biodiversity, how do humans affect it, and how does it affect humans? Environmental service-learning can be used to address College, Career and Civic Life (C3) standards from dimension 4, taking informed action such as D4.7 (grades 3-5): Explain different strategies and approaches students and others could take in working alone and together to address local, regional, and global problems, and predict some possible results of their actions (National Council for the Social Studies, 2013). Language arts and mathematics standards can also be taught and applied within a service-learning unit.

2 Generate a list of related problems that matter to students

Partway through the unit, each class started a list of problems to consider for further investigation. Collecting or listing problems that kids care about is an effective way to get a pulse on what matters to students. Fourth graders’ concerns fit into three broad categories:
• Pollution (air, water or land)
People need to stop littering. Before you even throw everything on the floor, think about it in your head… should I recycle, reuse? I can probably reuse this…
• Not causing harm to people, animals or the environment
Plastic bags suffocate animals.
• Wasting resources (e.g. electricity, natural resources or money)
If people waste energy, then their bill will get high and it will just be a waste of money.

Co-creating a visible list for students to see and think about legitimizes their concerns and may help them develop a sense of urgency to take action.

3 Collectively identify an important problem

The next step was for students to choose ONE problem for the upcoming service-learning project. Each teacher read the list of problems aloud, and students could cast three votes for the problems that they cared about the most. They could cast all 3 votes for one problem, or distribute their votes. Most teachers used this process to narrow in on one problem for their class to address. One teacher took it a step further by allowing small groups to work on different problems. Either way, allowing students to CHOOSE the problem they want to work on fueled their motivation for later work on solutions. Different classes honed in on problems such as wasting electricity, single-use plastics, foods being transported a long distance when they could be grown locally, and lack of recycling in their communities.

4 Explore possible solutions and teach decision-making skills

Students were introduced to three different ways that citizens can take action and create change. They can work directly on a problem, educate others in the community about the issue or work to influence decision-makers on policy to address the problem. They broadened their perspective on civic engagement as they brainstormed solution ideas in each of these categories. After deciding to work on the problem of lights left on when not in use, one class generated the following list of possibilities for further investigation (see Figure 2)

After considering ways to have an impact, students were ready to narrow in on a solution. Teachers introduced students to three criteria for a good solution. This critical step provides students with decision-making skills, and helps them take ownership of their solution. Our fourth graders considered the following guiding questions in a decision-making matrix:

Is the solution going to have a positive impact on our problem?
Is the solution feasible?
Do you care a lot about this? (Is it important to the group?)

At times, this process prompted further research to help them really consider feasibility. Of course, teachers needed to weigh in too, since ultimately they were responsible for supporting students as they enact solutions. When discussing impact, it’s important to help students understand that they don’t have to SOLVE the problem—the goal is to make progress or have an impact, however small.

While many groups chose the same problem, each class designed their own unique solution. Most focused on educating others about the topic that mattered to them, using a variety of methods: videos, posters, announcements, presentations to other students or administrators, and an energy fair for other members of the school community. The process of educating others about an issue can help consolidate learning (Hattie & Donoghue, 2016). Some groups took direct action in ways such as improving the school recycling program or getting others to pledge to use less electronics or less plastic (as described above). These direct actions are very concrete to upper elementary school children since impacts are often more visible.

5 Support students as they enact solutions

Social and emotional skills were addressed throughout the unit. During project implementation, teachers supported students as they applied those skills. Students developed self-management skills by listing tasks, preparing timelines and choosing roles to get the job done. At the end of the unit, students reflected on the impact that they made, and what they could do to have a larger impact. One group of students noticed that every single student in their class switched from plastic to reusable water bottles. Another student felt that their class had convinced people not to waste electricity. Some groups recognized that their solution wasn’t perfect, and wished they could have done more. For elementary students, it’s important to emphasize that any positive change makes a difference. Critical thinking skills develop when students can compare solutions and figure out which ones work the best and why. The instructional strategies described in this article have been used by educators across grade levels and subjects for other service-learning projects, and can be adapted for different purposes (KIDS Consortium, 2011).

Student-designed solutions yield deeper learning

One challenge that teachers faced when implementing environmental service-learning was that it took time to work on projects after the core disciplinary lessons, and curriculum maps often try to fast forward learning. Deeper learning occurred when teachers carved out time for service-learning projects, allowing students to apply what they know to a problem that mattered to them. There are always tradeoffs between breadth and depth, but ultimately students will remember lessons learned through experiences where they worked on a challenging problem and tried their own solution. School leaders can work with teachers to support them in finding time for deeper learning experiences. The students that we worked with cared a lot about protecting organisms and ecosystems, conserving resources and reducing pollution. They had many wonderful ideas for solutions that involved direct action, education or policy advocacy. For example, one student suggested the following solution for overuse of resources, “Go out and teach kids about animals losing homes and people polluting the world.” The voices of children around the country can be amplified through civic engagement initiatives such as environmental service-learning. Citizens of all ages are needed to actively engage in work toward solutions for climate change. Why not help them begin in elementary years?

References

Harkins, T., Merritt, E., Rimm-Kaufman, S.E., Hunt, A. & Bowers, N. (2019). Connect Science. Unpublished Manual. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia, Arizona State University & Harkins Consulting, LLC.

Hattie, J. A. & Donoghue, G. M. (2016). Learning strategies: A synthesis and conceptual model. Science of Learning, 1, 1-13.

KIDS Consortium. (2011). KIDS as planners: A guide to strengthening students, schools and communities through service-learning. Waldoboro, ME: KIDS Consortium.

Merritt, E., Bowers, N. & Rimm-Kaufman, S. (2019). Making connections: Elementary students’ ideas about electricity and energy resources. Renewable Energy, 138, 1078-1086.

National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). (2013). The college, career, and civic life (C3) framework for social studies state standards: Guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. Silver Spring, Md.: NCSS. Accessible online at www.socialstudies.org/C3.

National Research Council. (2012). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts and core ideas. Committee on a Conceptual Framework for New K-12 Science Education Standards. Board on Science Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

National Youth Leadership Council. (2008). K-12 service-learning standards for quality practice. St. Paul, MN: NYLC.

Acknowledgements:

The research described in this article was funded by a grant from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education (R305A150272). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the funding agency. We are grateful to the educators, students and colleagues who shared their ideas throughout the project.

Eileen Merritt is a research scientist in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech and former Assistant Professor in Teacher Preparation at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University. She developed her passion for environmental education along the banks of the Rivanna River with her students at Stone-Robinson Elementary. She can be reached at egmerritt@vt.edu.

Tracy Harkins, of Harkins Consulting LLC, works nationally guiding educational change. Tracy provides service-learning professional development and resources to educators to engage and motivate student learners. https://www.harkinsconsultingllc.com/

Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman is a Professor of Education in Educational Psychology – Applied Developmental Science at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia. She conducts research on social and emotional learning in elementary and middle school classrooms to provide roadmaps for administrators and teachers making decisions for children.

Integrating Watershed Science in High School Classrooms

by editor | Sep 5, 2025 | Climate Change & Energy, Conservation & Sustainability, Critical Thinking, Data Collection, Environmental Literacy

Integrating Watershed Science in High School Classrooms

The Confluence Project Approach

High school students in northern Idaho learn about watersheds and the impacts of climate change through an intensive field science program that aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards.

by Audrey Squires, Jyoti Jennewein, Mary Engels,
Dr. Brant Miller and Dr. Karla Eitel

“It’s not just because I personally love snow and skiing and snowshoeing and all that. It’s not just because I love to teach science outdoors in the field. It’s not even just because I value connecting my students with real scientists every chance I get. It’s honestly not any one of these particular things alone that has made the Snow Science field trip the absolute favorite part of my Environmental Science curriculum over the last four years. Instead, it’s the simple notion that for this generation of teenagers in the Inland Northwest, the impacts of climate change on the hydrology of snow within our watershed might be the most valuable social, economic, and ecological topic to cover in the entire school year. Snow is the backbone of our way of life in North Idaho, and the sense of awareness and empowerment my students develop as a result of this Confluence Project three-lesson unit is absolutely critical for their growth and progress as young adults heading into the 21st century.”
– The Confluence Project Teacher,
Advanced Placement Environmental Science

Clean water matters, immensely, to all of us. We desperately need education that promotes deep understanding of how water is important to students. Fortunately, water as a theme is easily incorporated into numerous scientific disciplines. From the basics of the water cycle in foundational science courses to the complexities of cellular processes in advanced biology; and from energy forecasting with anticipated snow melt in economics to the nuances of water as a solute in chemistry, water is foundational to a variety of subjects and can be incorporated into the learning objectives with a little creativity and willingness to step outside the box.

Over the past three years in high schools across Northern Idaho we have been working to develop a water based curriculum that has the flexibility to be used in many types of classroom, and that provides students with firsthand experience with water and water related issues in their local watershed. The Confluence Project (TCP) connects high school students to their local watersheds through three field investigations that take place throughout an academic year. These field investigations are designed to integrate place-based educational experiences with science and engineering practices, and focus on three themes: (1) water quality, (2) water quantity, and (3) water use in local landscapes. During these field investigations, students actively collect water, snowpack, and soil data and learn to analyze and interpret these data to the ‘big picture’ of resource quality and availability in their communities.

Before each field investigation, students are exposed to the pertinent disciplinary core ideas in class (National Research Council [NRC], 2011; NGSS Lead States, 2013), explore issues present at field sites, read relevant scientific articles, and learn field data collection techniques. Students then collect data in the field with support from resource professionals. After each field investigation, students analyze their data and use the results to discuss how to solve ecological issues they may have encountered. Adults guide students through this process at the beginning, with the goal that students will develop the necessary skillset to conduct independent, community-based, water-centric research projects by the end of the academic year (Figure 1). Students are ultimately challenged to creatively communicate their research projects, including both the scientific results and their proposed solutions to environmental issues encountered in their watershed, at a regional youth research conference (e.g. Youth Water Summit).

Originally created to serve as a sustainable method to continue outreach efforts from a National Science Foundation Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) grant (Rittenburg et al., 2015), the development of TCP coincided with the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (NGSS Lead States, 2013). With a strong emphasis on science and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and coherent progressions (Reiser, 2013), the TCP model closely aligns with these new standards. Given that much of the curriculum developed for the older National Science Education Standards is content-focused (NRC, 1996), TCP fits the need to create curriculum that includes opportunities for students to explain how and why phenomena occur and to develop the critical thinking skills associated with scientific investigations.

Pedagogical Framework

Sobel (1996) wrote that “authentic environmental commitment emerges out of first hand experiences with real place on a small, manageable scale” (p. 39). In TCP, authentic learning often emerges as students engage in first-hand exploration. Using the local watershed as a lens for field investigations enables students to connect with their landscapes and develop new depths of understanding of the world around them. By connecting students’ lived experiences and local landscapes with scientific information we are able to generate a unique learning setting, which in turn sparks continued interest in exploring the familiar from a new perspective. As one student from the 2015-16 program wrote:
This localized learning approach is often referred to as place-based education (PBE), which engages students in learning that utilizes the context of the local environment (Sobel, 1996; Smith, 2002). PBE seeks to connect students to local knowledge, wisdom, and traditions while providing an authentic context to engage students in meaningful learning within their everyday lives.

TCP also uses a project-based learning (PBL) approach (Bell, 2010) to help students frame the field investigations and the subsequent analysis and interpretation of collected data as foundations for their own research projects. These practices emphasize student construction of meaningful and usable scientific concepts and, perhaps more importantly, relating these concepts to their own lived experience. For example, one student wrote the following reflection after a class water quantity field investigation:

These types of reflections demonstrate an internalization of curriculum unit topics, which in turn motivates students to continue learning.
Importantly, PBE and PBL are used as frameworks to align lessons with the NGSS. The pedagogical features of PBL match well with the eight science and engineering practices at the core of the NGSS framework, which include: (1) asking questions and defining problems; (2) developing and using models; (3) planning and carrying out investigations; (4) analyzing and interpreting data; (5) using mathematics and computational thinking; (6) constructing explanations and designing solutions; (7) engaging in argument from evidence; and (8) obtaining, evaluating and communicating information (Bybee, 2011). In TCP, these pedagogical approaches provide a meaningful context for students to engage in developing understandings of disciplinary core ideas, while the curriculum creates new, effective ways to enact the NGSS.

Empirical evaluation of student learning in the program (Squires et al., under review) indicates that after participation in TCP, students expressed greater concern for local ecological issues, recognized the efficacy of science as a tool to address environmental issues in their communities, and were more engaged in science when PBE and PBL pedagogies were used.

Project Implementation

“Yesterday my entomology class went to a local creek to study the bugs and life around it. It was really cool to fish a lot of bugs out of the water. We got lots of benthic macroinvertebrates such as a mayfly (dragonfly), damselflies, all in different instars (sic) [stages of growth] …. We tested the pH of the water, the transparency of the water, and the dissolved oxygen in it…This was really a fun project, it was great getting all of the bugs I’ve been learning about and it was really cool to use my knowledge about them… I suggest that anyone should go and do this, you could learn a lot about your region’s water quality.”
–TCP Entomology Student

TCP curriculum aligns with several Performance Expectations and Disciplinary Core Ideas from the NGSS (Table 1), and can also easily adjust to fit within multiple courses. TCP curriculum has been incorporated into less flexible, standards-driven courses like Biology and Chemistry, as well as more flexible courses like Environmental Science, Entomology, and Earth Science. While each class participates in the same three units (water quality, water quantity, and water use), teachers tailor these units to the learning objectives of their courses.

For example, environmental science teachers have been able to tie the water quantity unit to global climate change, land and resource use, and local economics. Students analyzed collected snowpack data to determine how much water would be available in their watershed for growing crops and sustaining lake and river-based tourism economies. They also compared their data to historical figures to understand how climate change has impacted water availability in their watershed over the past several decades.

By contrast, TCP biology teachers have successfully incorporated TCP units as part of their yearlong curriculum aligned with rigorous biology standards. For example, as part of the water use unit one teacher discussed sustainable water use in an agriculture setting by focusing on concepts like plant growth and cellular function. Other teachers have presented photosynthesis, primary productivity, and fisheries biology during the water quality unit, and speciation, biodiversity, and habitat as core topics during the water quantity unit.

Even in very specialized science classes there is room to engage with this curriculum. For example, one entomology teacher was able to highlight the role of macroinvertebrates as indicators of stream health when teaching the water quality unit. He taught students insect characteristics, discussed growth and metamorphism, and then showed students how to tie flies in order to solidify that knowledge in a unique, hands-on way. The class then visited a stream near their school to identify macroinvertebrates and learn their importance in evaluating water quality. Last but not least, TCP curriculum was designed for the potential of cross-course collaboration, which gives students the opportunity to apply and link concepts and skills learned in science class to their other courses while developing critical thinking skills. Several program teachers have collaborated with colleagues in their schools to integrate content across disciplines and open students’ eyes to interdisciplinary study.

Connecting with local professionals

The most valuable thing that we learned on our field trip to [the restoration site] was learning about the processes that were taken to restore the creek, and why they did it… We think that this field trip has shaped our understanding of these careers by actually experiencing the job and their daily tasks that can do good to the environment (sic). Following the field trip, we can say that we have a better understanding of just how time consuming and difficult the process of restoration in an area such as [the restoration site] can be. –TCP student water quality field investigation post trip reflection

Teachers often struggle to plan activities beyond the day-to-day classroom lessons, which is one reason why local professionals and leaders are an essential facet of TCP. Agency scientists, Tribal land managers, and graduate students provide scientific support to teachers and students during field investigations, in-class pre- and post-lessons, and final research projects. This gives students an opportunity to collaborate with and learn from specialists and practicing scientists in their communities, allowing the students to gain experience carrying out science and engineering practices alongside experts. In addition, students learn about career opportunities and restoration efforts in their local watersheds from TCP partners.

Examples of past TCP partners include universities (extension, graduate students, and professors); Tribes (environmental agencies and Elders); state agencies (environmental quality and fish and game); federal agencies (Natural Resources Conservation Service, United States Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Avalanche Center); and local organizations (environmental nonprofits, homeowner’s associations, and ski resorts).

Since these collaborations are critical to the success of TCP program we have developed a Reaching Out to Potential Partners checklist to help teachers contact and recruit community partners. The checklist helps teachers develop a coherent narrative to use with busy professionals which highlights the mutual benefits of collaboration.

Keeping costs to a minimum

Admittedly, implementation requires some capital investment to cover essential program costs such as busing, substitute teachers, and field equipment. However, these costs can be minimized with some creative organization. Multiple TCP schools have been able to eliminate busing costs by using streams near or on school property. Supportive administrators can creatively minimize substitute teacher costs (in one case the principal agreed to cover the class instead). Field equipment is certainly necessary to collect data (see Resources), but the equipment required may potentially be borrowed from agencies or university partners. A classroom supply budget or a small grant from the booster club or other local organization can also help cover such costs and build supplies over several academic years. While regional youth research conferences, such as the Youth Water Summit are excellent ways to motivate students, it is possible to get the research benefits without the associated costs. We suggest inviting partners and other local experts to attend research project presentations at school. This way students can still benefit from external feedback as well as gain research and presentation skills.

Conclusion

TCP has provided a valuable framework for school-wide exploration of local water-related issues. TCP provides hands-on, place-based and problem-based learning while addressing key Next Generation Science Standards and preparing students for the kind of inter-disciplinary problem solving that will be increasingly necessary to address the complex challenges being our students will face as they become the workforce and citizens of the future.

Resources

The full TCP curriculum including lessons, standard alignment, field trip planning, and other recommendations can be found at: http://bit.ly/2cNdNIm
Interested in learning more from the TCP’s leadership team? Contact us at theconfluenceproject@uidaho.edu

Acknowledgements

A program like this requires dedicated and creative teacher and program partners. Without the enthusiastic commitment of our past and present teachers and partners TCP would never have been actualized. We’d like to thank Rusti Kreider, Jamie Esler, Cindy Rust, Kat Hall, Laura Laumatia, Jim Ekins, and Marie Pengilly for their aid in program design and implementation, as well as for continued programmatic effort and support. Furthermore, thank you to Matt Pollard, Jen Pollard, and Robert Wolcott; along with graduate students Paris Edwards, Courtney Cooper, Meghan Foard, Karen Trebitz, Erik Walsh, and Sarah Olsen for your dedication to TCP implementation. In addition, we would like to acknowledge funding from the NSF GK-12 program grant #0841199 and an EPA Environmental Education grant #01J05401.

Audrey Squires, Jyoti Jennewein and Mary Engels are past program managers of TCP. Squires is currently the Restoration Projects Manager for Middle Fork Willamette Watershed Council while Jennewein and Engels are PhD students at the University of Idaho (UI). Dr. Brant Miller, UI science education faculty, was the Principal Investigator of the EPA grant that funded TCP in 2015-16. Dr. Karla Eitel is a faculty member and Director of Education at the McCall Outdoor Science School, a part of the UI College of Natural Resources.

References
Bell, S. (2010). Project-based learning for the 21st century: Skills for the future. The Clearing House, 83(2), 39-43.
Bybee, R. W. (2011). Scientific and engineering practices in K–12 classrooms: Understanding a framework for K–12 science education. The Science Teacher, 78 (9), 34–40.
NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
National Research Council. (1996). National Science Education Standards. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
National Research Council. (2011). A framework for K-12 science education: Practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), 2013. Disciplinary Core Ideas in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) Final Release. http://nstahosted.org/pdfs/ngss/20130509/matrixofdisciplinarycoreideasinngss-may2013.pdf Accessed 22 April 2016.
Reiser, B. J. (2013). What professional development strategies are needed for successful implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards? Paper presented at the Invitational Research Symposium on Science Assessment. Washington, DC.
Rittenburg, R.A., Miller, B.G., Rust, C., Kreider, R., Esler, J., Squires, A.L., Boylan, R.D. (2015). The community connection: Engaging students and community partners in project-based science. The Science Teacher, 82(1), 47-52.
Smith, G. A. (2002). Place-based education: Learning to be where we are. The Phi Delta Kappan, 83 (8), 84–594.
Sobel, D. (1996). Beyond ecophobia: Reclaiming the heart in nature education (No. 1). Orion Society.
Squires, A., Jennewein, J., Miller, B. G., Engels, M., Eitel, K. B. (under review). The Confluence Approach: Enacting Next Generation Science Standards to create scientifically literate citizens.

« Older Entries