Mudluscious Lessons

he forest can be deceiving. To the casual onlooker, it appears to be saturated in earth-tone greens and browns. But a closer look reveals the shiny yellow skunk cabbages, delicate purple bleeding hearts, wild roses waving chartreuse blossoms, and quiet white trilliums.

The bright slickers and backpacks of six students from the Battle Ground School District also provide splashes of color in this wet spring landscape. The Amboy Middle School students slog through brush and grass, climb over fallen logs, slip in mud, and cross and recross a cold, swift current on their way along a 1.5 mile stretch of Cedar Creek in Southwest Washington.

The students are accompanied by a teacher and biologists from the U.S. Forest Service and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The biologists are evaluating the stream to make suggestions for restoration that will be done by landowners and private groups. The students are there to learn firsthand about different elements of aquatic habitat and how their health affects fish populations. There hands-on learning has been inspired by teachers who believe in community-based learning, a grant from the Forest Service, in-kind contributions from Fish and Wildlife, and the students' own initiative.

"That passion for learning—it's hard to feel that when you're reading about someone else's experience," says Gina Garlie, a third-year Amboy eighth-grade teacher who helped facilitate the grant. Garlie is a former Forest Service employee who worked with biologists and researchers doing curriculum development. That experience has helped her to understand that science is "more than just the academics." She wants students at Amboy to have the same appreciation for science as a living, hands-on, and dynamic discipline.

"By seeing what is good habitat for streams, the students can really understand the components—what we mean by 'ground cover' or 'a hole,'" she says.

One teacher and up to seven sixth- and eighth-grade students take part in each of six field outings with biologists Debbie Hollen of the Forest Service and Lisa Harlan of Fish and Wildlife. To be selected for the survey project, students had to answer four essay questions and have parental permission.

Students are assigned responsibilities such as identifying and measuring pools deeper than three feet, identifying logs wider than three feet and longer than 50 feet, measuring water velocity, observing streamside cover and erosion, and looking for "redds," the nests in the stream bed where salmon lay their eggs.

Kids Deciding Values for Adulthood
Landowner Rick Dunning meets students at the beginning of the stream survey and is eager to see the completed data sheets. Dunning, a tree farmer, has been replanting cedar along the creek, even though this is an area that by law he will not be able to harvest. "He has a lot of respect for nature," says Garlie. "He's trying to set a good example and the kids need to see that."

Marianne Prather, a sixth-grade teacher at Amboy Middle School, agrees. "This is the age when kids make decisions about what kind of adult they'll be," she says. Prather has tried to influence her students' environmental consciousness by demonstrating how one drop of oil can cover a surface of water. She believes the lessons have paid dividends. "I have kids in here who will never pour oil down a drain because they know it kills fish," she says.

Students who participated in the survey from Prather's class brought their field lessons back to the classroom. They recently completed a unit on the life cycle of the Chinook salmon, complete with a 55-gallon tank donated by the local public utility district and stocked with salmon eggs from the Washougal hatchery. Prather's students fed the fish; cleaned the tank; recorded the water's pH, temperature, smell, and color; and chronicled the development and survival rate of the fish in a daily journal. In addition, each student contributed to a PowerPoint presentation on the salmon's life cycle that they presented to their parents at an open house. Finally, students released the juvenile Chinook into Chelatchie Creek, which flows next to the school.

Hands-on Learning Adds Meaning to Lessons
Prather is convinced the hands-on aspect of the learning made all the difference. "That salmon unit would mean nothing to the kids without the tank," she says. At the same time, she believes that such direct experiences give meaning to what students learn in books.

The sixth-graders on the survey speak enthusiastically and knowledgeably about salmon. Sometimes, when the eighth-graders have questions, the sixth-graders can provide answers. "When the yolk sacs are gone, its called 'buttoning up,'" notes one girl. "Do you think that's one we released?" asks another sixth-grader wistfully when the group spots some juveniles in Cedar Creek.

Garlie hopes the school will receive the grant again next year, and possibly involve more students. However, student participation is limited by the logistics of transporting and supervising the groups. "If we could get something going on our own creek," Garlie says, "we could have the whole school involved."

Garlie also would like to see the field experience tied more closely to the curriculum. "I would definitely have more of a follow-up at the end," she says.

For example, students could provide actual stream restoration and clean up or make presentations about salmon in other classes or at other schools.

After lunch the group nets, categorizes, and identifies aquatic insects—stoneflies, caddis flies, and mayflies—using a hand lens, tweezers, and specimen box. Hollen asks whether the students think it's good for the salmon that the stream contains a variety of insects.

"Well, if you think about us, we wouldn't really want to eat the same thing everyday," says one student.

Trade Tools Fascinate Students
Hollen, who initiated the proposal and agreement between the Battle Ground School District and the two government agencies, wanted to expose students to potential careers. And students are fascinated by the professionals' gear: the waders, the cell phone in a clear plastic case, and the glasses with polarized lenses for viewing the redds. But students are most captivated by the "Rite in the Rain, All-Weather Hip Pocket Spiral Memo," which they use to record their observations for later incorporation into the survey data sheets.

"Kids have to have a why," says Prather. "They don't have to grow up and be a fish biologist, but they should know that they can."

For more information, contact Gina Garlie, (260) 247-5426.

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