PLAIN – Beaver Valley Elementary students were formally invited to share their camera trapping program with legislators from their districts and state agency leaders at the annual Environmental & Sustainability Literacy Student Summit on Jan. 28 and 29.
“We think that all schools should have a camera trapping program. That's what the kids are putting out there, is why we think all students in Washington should have a camera trapping program, and how it gets the kids out and having fun getting to know their area,” said Beaver Valley teacher Eric Tiegel.
The program, led by project lead Jeff Layton, enables students to study local wildlife through trail cameras placed through the Lake Wenatchee and Plain area, observing changes in the environment and animal behavior throughout the school year.
“It's a really cool, interesting project, and these kids get to see some really neat stuff. To just be able to share that with the greater community is neat,” said Layton.
Each month, Layton visits Tiegel’s second through fourth grade class to collect and review the camera footage for an interactive biology lesson. Layton spends the first hour discussing what’s going on in the environment with the students, gleaning lessons from the previous month’s footage.
As Layton shows the class a diagram of the subnivean layer, or the space between the ground
and the snowpack where animals take refuge, students take equitable initiative in the conversation. When Layton talks about a bird that hibernates in the layer, a student shares about a type of squirrel that does the same. When the class watches recent trail camera footage of a rare mountain beaver, another student jumps in to tell the class it's a “prehistoric hamster,” which it is in fact, a prehistoric rodent.
This interactive classroom, where the students freely share their observations, theories, and knowledge, is by design. Every time Layton visits the classroom, he starts the discussion off with leading questions, such as, “What changes have you observed about our weather and environment since we last spoke?” or, “Do you think it’s been easier or harder for the animals, and why?”
On this January visit, Layton brought in North Cascades National Park wildlife biologist Kristin Rine to share about her professional work using trail cameras, and help the class set up a hair snare to collect specific data on the area’s fisher.
“Lake Wenatchee area, where you guys live…is the most important spot we found for the North Cascades fisher. For some reason, we released them on the west side of the crest, and they all, a lot of them, made their way over here and set up shop. And they love it around here. We call it Fisher town,” said Rine.
After their classroom discussion, the entire K-12 school loads the bus and heads to Nason Creek, where two of their trail cameras are located. The students help change the batteries and replace the memory cards of the cameras, then set up two hair snares with Rine. After a month, Layton will collect the findings for the class to discuss what they’ve observed.
“It makes it feel real, right? So often stuff like this is theoretical, like, ‘This is what scientists do in the world.’ But we're actually out doing it with these kids,” said Layton.
This week, Tiegel’s fourth graders will present their program to state leadership at the annual Environmental & Sustainability Literacy Student Summit, hosted by Pacific Education Institute (PEI) and the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). The class, as well as the Wenatchee High School Earth Club, are two of only 22 school groups formally invited to present at the summit.
“[I hope they see] what’s possible. With a little bit of initiative and imagination and some flexibility from administrators, you know, like you can do some cool stuff,” said Layton.
The fourth graders received a civics lesson about the capital and who they will be speaking to, and prepared a presentation with a posterboard visual of the animals they’ve observed in their program.
“I made a hand drawn picture, and I took a video footage picture, wrote some facts, and then at the top, next to the name that says ‘Great Blue Heron,’ I started getting sciency, too sciency for anyone to ever understand anything…I love science,” said fourth grader Oliver.
The students will also get to hear from a panel representing state agencies focused on education and environmental issues, including the Office of Native Education, OSPI, Washington State Department of Fish & Wildlife, This is Indian Country, and Thurston Conservation District. After the summit, students will be invited for a tour of the Capitol building.
“I want them to remember this their whole life. Getting the students out as a classroom is a way of creating memories, and I want those memories to stick. So they’ll remember, ‘Yeah, we did these animal cameras, we even went to the capital one time,’” said Tiegel.
Taylor Caldwell: 509-433-7276 or taylor@ward.media
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