Mission Ground Truth:21 – Parks as Classrooms (part two)

Last week, we got a bird’s eye view of our Mission Ground Truth:21 program teacher training. Mission Ground Truth is an inquiry-based experiential science curriculum that gives middle school students the opportunity to investigate the health and value of forest and freshwater stream ecosystems. Combining classroom and field sessions, Mission Ground Truth gives students a glimpse into the everyday life of an ecologist.  Programs like these show the impact of learning both inside and outside of the classroom.

 

Students surveying the stream

Parks as Classrooms

For the Mission Ground Truth:21 program, teachers are responsible for leading 3 discovery activities that introduce students to the concepts they’ll be testing and analyzing on their field day. During these sessions, students use Google Earth to investigate the landscape they will be studying in the field to make predictions about its health, identify interacting organisms within woodland food webs, and practice making predictions about water quality based on different human impact scenarios.

Propel students sampling the stream

All of these activities lead up to the field session where students have the chance to be scientists for the day. The all-day field session is taught in Frick Park by Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy staff. Students spend 3 hours hiking through Frick Park’s woodland and 3 hours wading through the Nine Mile Run stream using hands-on scientific methodology and instrumentation to gather and analyze data about the health of these ecosystems. They’re learning that science doesn’t just take place in the lab, it’s happening all around us and it’s relevant to our everyday lives.

Bailey Warren is the Education Program Assistant at the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy through a 10-month apprenticeship with Public Allies Pittsburgh AmeriCorps program.

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Mission Ground Truth:21 – Educational Partnerships (part one)

Despite the frigid temperatures, the wind chill, and a two-hour delay to boot, 10 teachers showed up to the Frick Environmental Center for our first ever Mission Ground Truth: 21 teacher training. Mission Ground Truth is an inquiry-based experiential science curriculum that gives middle school students the opportunity to investigate the health and value of forest and freshwater stream ecosystems. Combining classroom and field sessions, Mission Ground Truth gives students a glimpse into the everyday life of an ecologist.  After piloting the program in the spring with the 7^th grade science classes at Propel Montour, we have expanded our reach this school year to include Propel Homestead, Propel McKeesport, Winchester Thurston, The Ellis School, and the Environmental Charter School.

Educational Partnerships

Propel teachers learn how to use dichotomous keys to ID tree leaves.

Teacher trainings are an important part of developing a partnership between informal educators and classroom teachers. We have different styles, different objectives, and different experiences to bring to the table. The training was a chance for everyone to get to know each other, establish appropriate roles and expectations, and to introduce new teachers to the content of the program. We wanted to provide a space where they could ask questions, give feedback, and learn from Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy staff and teachers who have previously gone through the program.

Many of the teachers had limited experience teaching outdoors and wanted some tips to prepare their class and themselves. As an informal educator myself, two of the most integral aspects of a successful program are ensuring that students are dressed appropriately for the weather (nothing is more distracting than discomfort) and having an enthusiastic and involved teacher on board. Really, it all comes back to communicating expectations to others. We had a great conversation about how helpful it is for the teacher to model the good behavior we expect from our students. As much as the training is for the teachers to become comfortable and acquainted with the program, it was also a space for us to get feedback on the curriculum content. From these discussions, we developed an Environmental Education tip sheet to share with all of our program partner teachers.

Calculating the area of Frick Park using Google Earth

At the end of every discovery activity simulation, we always came back to the overarching goal:  We want the kids to have hands-on experience outdoors doing what scientists do. They’re getting the chance to see what it means to be an ecologist. That means doing research and making predictions, then going out into the field to test those predictions and analyze their data. Both elements are essential. Once they understand that, then they can work through the details that make it all happen.

Be sure to check out part two of our blog next week to learn more about Mission Ground Truth:21 and how we use parks as classrooms.

Bailey Warren is the Education Program Assistant at the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy through a 10-month apprenticeship with Public Allies Pittsburgh AmeriCorps program.

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Mission Ground Truth – Teaching Science With Nature

Mission Ground Truth Team in Frick Park

Environmental education is one of the most fundamental investments we make in the future of our parks. At the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy we understand that through educating and engaging youth, we can grow a new generation of park stewards. Our High School Urban EcoSteward program takes students from six area High Schools out into the parks to learn ecological restoration and maintenance techniques. This service learning technique benefits the communities in which the students work. We are also preparing to begin construction on the new Environmental Center at Frick Park which will be a state of the art environmental education facility with a focus on hands on learning.

Our newest endeavor, Mission Ground Truth, is a collaboration between the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, the Frick Environmental Center, the CREATE Lab at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Schrader Environmental Center at the Oglebay Institute in Wheeling, West Virginia. The program will be tailored to middle school students with a foundation in scientific processes of discovery. In Pittsburgh, the course will pilot in April with Propel schools.

Special nets are used to collect bugs

On February 22, 2012, members of the Mission Ground Truth team met in Frick Park to finalize the curriculum which will focus on stream and forest health. “We want to teach kids what ecological services the parks are doing for us,” says Parks Conservancy Education Coordinator, Taiji Nelson. “We want to show kids that science is a real job and that they can do it, not all scientists are in white lab coats.”

When learning about forest health, students will focus largely on the composition of wooded areas. What type of forest is it? Maple, Oak, Hickory? They’ll learn about fragmentation which occurs when small areas of a forest are cut down, dividing a large forest into smaller pieces – this most often occurs for the creation of roads and walkways. Since different plants and animals favor forest interiors versus edge habitats, fragmentation can dramatically affect the ecology of a particular forest.

Collecting data with a Pasco GLX Xplorer

There are a couple of ways Mission Ground Truth students will evaluate stream health. One is through measuring the chemical characteristics of a stream using Pasco GLX Xplorers which Taiji says is like “taking the temperature” of the stream to determine its health. The GLX Xplorers will measure the water’s ph, dissolved oxygen, temperature, and conductivity which is basically the amount of pollution that is dissolved in the stream. Waterbots, which have been developed by CREATE Lab, will be placed at different points within the Nine Mile Run Watershed and take similar readings constantly to show the students how variables such as time, season, and rainfall affect the stream health.

Equally important to understand the health of a stream is to discover what bugs and vegetation are present. Using special square nets, the kids will be responsible for cataloging the bugs (benthic macroinvertebrates) that are found in a one meter area. By disturbing the water and turning over rocks they will find and count the different varieties of bugs which they can identify using a guide provided to them. Since some bugs can survive select pollutants and others can’t, the final bug counts they produce will be telling.     

 Mission Ground Truth has been in operation at the Schrader Environmental

Cranefly larva found in Frick Park stream

Center for 10 years. The program is coming to Frick Park with the help of the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy and the Frick Environmental Center and support from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation. Additionally, the Parks Conservancy is helping to refocus the curriculum, define learning goals, implement assessment tools, and find ways to make the data usable. The CREATE Lab at CMU will incorporate technology through the use of Gigapan and waterbot technology, as well as by developing an online platform to share data, stories, and questions.

Perhaps one of the greatest contributions Mission Ground Truth will make is that the information collected by our budding scientists and by the CREATE Lab waterbots will be made public. In this way the students will be learning and simultaneously contributing to a data pool that will help us to better understand the health of our parks. This new knowledge will be integrated into the management plans for the care of our parks by the Parks Conservancy and other organizations.

If you have questions about the program feel free to contact us. Visit our website at www.pittsburghparks.org.  

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