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What Makes a Project Successful?
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In spring 2001, Diack performed a random survey of its previously
funded projects and learned that many long-term ecology education programs
have thrived from its initial seed money. So, what makes these programs
successful? Among the projects surveyed, it found the following
common ingredients. Diack offers these as insights to help you make your
project successful and sustainable for years to come.
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Nearby Study Sites – Choose a site that is easily accessible and/or
within walking distance from your school. Having a local site will give
students more ownership in the project and more opportunities to explore
the site.
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Support – Prevent burnout by gathering support and participation
from other teachers (from the same or different schools),
administration, parents and classroom volunteers.
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Professional Partnership – Develop partnerships with natural
resource agencies and community organizations. As the technical experts
of the project, their participation will enable your students to gain
skills using current scientific methodology while studying authentic
data.
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Engaging Projects – Involve your students in designing a project
that is interesting, authentic and meaningful to themselves and the
community. Ecology studies can be as varied as the students themselves,
but allowing their voices to be reflected in whatever project the class
undertakes will stimulate student enthusiasm.
Coordinating a project’s logistics and generating support can consume a
large part of a project leader’s time. To prevent burnout, use the
resources in your community. Project leaders have developed
partnerships with the following agencies and community organizations:
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US Fish and Wildlife Service
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US Forest Service
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US Bureau of Land Management
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Natural Resource Conservation Service
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Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
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Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
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OSU/OSU Cooperative Extension and 4-H Programs
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PSU, SOU, EOU and other local colleges and universities
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City, County and state parks departments, utilities and environmental
services
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Community councils for forests, salmon and watersheds
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National Wildlife Federation
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Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and The Native Plant Society
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Local Nature centers and historic societies
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Timber Companies and local businesses
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Why Weave Ecology into the Tapestry of your Curriculum?
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To measure the success of some recently funded ecology education
projects, the Diack Program distributed a survey. The results confirmed
what many already knew. Out of 56 surveys, 49 teachers noted a positive
change in their student’s attitude toward school, 19 acknowledged an
improvement in student’s attendance, 28 noticed increased parental
involvement, 35 surveys stated that principals and other staff became
more interested in the project, and 37 teachers agreed that their
outdoor ecology project improved their own attitude for teaching. Why?
Because learning in the outdoors is authentic, engaging and in the words
of Astoria High School Teacher Allan Garvin, “Field studies are
exciting.”
At its heart, the goal of education reform is to improve learning. To
accomplish this, reformers are urging educators to provide community
based real world experiences, utilize hands-on, cooperative learning
approaches to engage students in their own learning process, focus on
critical-thinking, problem solving skills, replace the traditional,
compartmentalized subjects with an interdisciplinary curriculum, and set
higher academic standards with performance based assessments. An
ecology education program employs all of these approaches and can
increase student interest and participation in school.
The following pages highlight ten separate projects of outstanding
merit. The Diack Program
chose these projects to emphasize the
positive changes that ecology education can make when intertwined within a
school curriculum. We encourage you to read their stories, find
similarities within your own situation and look for ways to integrate
authentic studies of the natural world into your student’s learning
experience. |
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Sunridge Middle School
Pendleton, OR |
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What Diack Funded
The purchase of weather instruments and equipment
for a weather station that monitors and records rain, temperature,
humidity and air pressure and has remote capabilities
so some of the measurement can be monitored in the classroom.
Partnerships and Other Funding Sources
The National Weather Service of Pendleton
provided the "weather box", access to its weather data. and
technical support. a TAPESTRY grant funded a noxious plant study.
"Middle School students in particular need to
connect what they are doing in their class with real life in their
community". In this farm/ranch community where weather is a constant
concern studying and tracking weed propagation with weather makes a
clear and immediate connection". |
Jodie Harnden
700 SW Runnion
Pendleton, OR 97801
541 276 4724
Weather & Noxious Weed Study
Jodie wanted her students
to learn about weather and sought help from the National Weather
Service in Pendleton. Field trips would not provide the immediate
learning experience that would address the subject in depth.
A weather station with remote
capabilities in the classroom would. Jody wrote up "the simple grant
application" on the Diack Program's web-site. Shortly she received
an e-mail asking how she might tie the grant application into
ecology. The weather station supported the continuation of previous
projects elated to ecology and the environment funded by a TAPESTRY
grant. This project then went forward with tracking and comparing
weather with weed propagation rates.
The weather instruments
were placed in a "weather box" provided by the National Weather
Service in Pendleton which also provided technical support and
access to its weather data. Because of the remote classroom
capability of the weather instruments, the class was able to
immediately start tracking and changes and recording/graphing their
own data. Additionally because Sunrise Middle School was across town
from the National Weather Service facility and at the same altitude,
the students were able to compare data and determine when there was
a difference and search out reasons why a difference in such a short
distance.
In this agricultural region weather and the
students gain respect because they better understand what the
weather reports mean so they can apply the reports to farm planning. Their family's work activity varied with weather
and the students gain respect because they better understood what
the weather reports meant so it could be applied to farm planning.
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Junction City High School
Junction City |
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What Diack Funded
Water sampling and field survey equipment, field guides
Partnerships/ Other Funding Sources
Education Together Foundation, Junction City, OR
Portland State University, Teacher in the Woods program
Swanson Superior Forest Products, Noti, OR
Hayworth Farms, Harrisburg, OR
NSF ICAN Project, Oregon State University
“First field work done by our high school students in at least 17
years! Research that was meaningful and makes sense to students because
they ‘did it.’”- Paul Breese, Juction City High School |
Paul Breese, Biology Teacher
1135 W. Sixth Ave.
Juction City, OR 97448
541-998-2343
Steam Comparisons
After 25 years of teaching, Paul decided to “breathe some real life
back into his biology classes.” He never used to have the
confidence to take kids outside but then he spent a summer working in
the field with Portland State University’s “Teacher in the Woods”
program, and he knew he’d never keep his teaching indoors again.
Each year finds Paul and his classes working on mapping and monitoring
different stretches of a local stream. This past year, they
compared data collected from a stream stretch in a working forest,
another flowing through agricultural land and the last in Juction
City. Six half-day field trips allow each biology class to test
vertebrates as well as survey riparian plants. Data is compared
from trip to trip and provided to the cooperating landowners (a
logging company and a farmer) as well as the local watershed council.
Paul has so much energy and excitement for
this study that he has developed a small group tutorial for
advanced Biology students.Beginning gall 2001, these students travel
almost daily to the stream sites to collect long-term data. The results of this long-term study will continue to benefit their
community, and the real world experiential learning will benefit all of
his students for years to come. |
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Waldo Middle School
Salem |
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What Diack Funded
Field survey equipment, Field Guides, infrared camera system, spotting
scope
Partnerships/Other Funding Sources
Willamette National Forest
Oregon Zoo
Baskett Slough national Wildlife Refuge
Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge
National Zoological Park’s
Conservation and Research Center
Oregon Watersheds
“With careful
planning and community support, field-based science inquiry can be a
wonderful way to teach science in general and ecology in particular.”
– Mike Weddle, Waldo Middle School |
Mike Weddle,
Science Teacher
2805 Lansing Ave. NE
Salem, OR 97303
503-399-3215
Biodiversity Monitoring
71% of Waldo’s students in the Jane Goodall Environmental Magnet
School (JGEMS) pass the state science test compared with 35% for the
entire school, 52% for the district and 60% for the state.
Yet Waldo is the lowest socio-economic school in their district and
JENS students are chosen by lottery. What’s their secret?
A hands-on inquiry-based, integrated curriculum with real-life
applications has engaged these students at all levels. This is
the recipe for an outstanding education program and a future cadre of
citizens who will care about their community.
JGEMS is a school within a school at Waldo where a team of teachers
integrate math, science, language arts, history and computer
technology throughout the curriculum.
In Mike’s Conservation Biology class, students regularly travel to
forest or wetland sites to meet with professionals and learn
techniques and protocols for data collection.
Each spring, students formulate their own questions and
design an investigation at a study site. Once data collection is
complete, they analyze the results and display their findings in a
poster-board presentation for local scientists and school board members.
In 2001 the investigations focused on bio-diversity. In past years
they have focused on global warming or endangered species. |
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Astoria High School
Astoria |
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What Diack Funded
Field supplies, water- and soil-sampling equipment, graphing calculator,
gravity convection oven, GPS system, cameras
Partnerships/Other Funding Sources
American Fisheries Society
Lower Columbia River Estuary Program
Local businesses
City of Astoria
Lewis and Clark Rediscovery Program
“You either have to be a little insane or have a good work ethic to pull
it off. We’re lucky because we’re a little of both.”- Lee Cain and
Allan Garvin, Astoria High School responding to how they achieve success
in their ecology curriculum .
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Michael Baker, Lee Cain and Allan Garvin, Science Teachers
1001 West Marine Dr.
Astoria, OR 97103
503-325-3911
https://www.edline.net/pages/Astoria_SHS
Authentic Science
Three teachers work to bring first-hand authentic scientific
investigations to Astoria High School. The administration’s support of
applied field sciences plus these teachers’ creativity resulted in
inquiry-based ecology being integrated into their class programs.
Astoria students graduate with first-hand knowledge of authentic
scientific investigations.
For the past two years, Michael Baker’s biology classes have been
collecting data on the hydrology, soils, land cover and forest habitat
for the GLOBE program. They also performed a comparative study on a
county park, a working forest and the forest adjacent to Astoria High.
Students monitored the health, diversity of vegetation, macro
invertebrates, amphibians and mammals of each.
In the meantime, Allan Garvin’s Integrated Science students survey
plant species, salamanders, macro invertebrates and water quality in
ground-water monitoring wells at a nearby site.
Data will be
interpreted and provided to the City of Astoria. His students also take
an annual field trip to monitor a local wetland. Assisted by volunteer
scientists from the community, students learn how to survey for water
quality, insects, fish, amphibians and birds, as well as mapping and
removing invasive plants.
Thanks to the creativity of the high school staff and administration.
Astoria’s scientists, landowners, government organizations and students
are working together to address the scientific question of their
community. We know Astoria will benefit from their efforts for many
years to come. |
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Archer Glen
Elementary School, Sherwood
Sherwood Middle School, Sherwood |
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What Diack Funded
Field supplies including spotting scopes, microscopes, binoculars, plant
press, field guides
Partnerships/Other Funding Sources
Friends of Tualatin River Wildlife Refuge
US Fish and Wildlife Service
Metro Greenspaces Education Grants
City of Sherwood
Sherwood School District
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Janet Bechtold, TAG Teacher
400 N. Sherwood Blvd.
Sherwood, OR 97140
503-625-8100
Tualatin River Investigation and Field Guide
The United State Fish and Wildlife Service needed a “kid friendly”
field guide for the future Tualatin River Wildlife Refuge, Sherwood
fifth & sixth graders were up to the task and more. Teachers
know students can accomplish amazing things but even they were
impressed by the professional work from their students.
For the past few years,
this group has been working on several “clean water” projects in their
community including an area designated as the future Tualatin River
Wildlife Refuge. Then a variety of grants provided funs for the
students to create the guide. Students helped research plants and
animals on the refuge with field science equipment funded by Diack
Ecology Education Program.
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After much of the research was complete, students joined an after school
“Refuge Club” to refine the information and work with the science and
technology teachers to develop a professional field guide. For a year
and a half, they worked closely with the USFWS, rewriting sections in
accordance with the agency’s needs. The students also promoted the
opening of the refuge and distributed their guidebook at various
community festivals. The guidebook will be provided to each refuge
visitor.
Returning to the refuge for additional research was a key motivator in
volunteering for the after-school club, but the students admitted that
even the long hours spent writing and designing were worth it. We
know the Sherwood students learned a lot about a special place in their
community. They learned more about working together for their
community and making it a better place.
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