Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 1, January 2004
Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Homewaters Project links classroom
with natural world
By JAMES BUSH
On a recent drizzly Seattle morning, a 50-foot section of Thornton Creek in Meadowbrook became a classroom for a dozen fourth- and fifth-graders.
These students from Rick Lemberg's class at AE II at Decatur, an alternative school in the Wedgwood neighborhood, have already built stream models and are moving up to the real thing. Their guide is Linda Versage, schools coordinator for the Homewaters Project.
Founded in 1993 and based at North Seattle Community College, the program (originally known as the Thornton Creek Project) has 10 years of experience providing programs in watershed ecology, local history, and community mapping.
Partnering with the Seattle Public Schools, Seattle Public Utilities, and the Shoreline Public Schools, among others, Homewaters' four staffers and numerous program volunteers will interact with some 1,250 students and 50 teachers in more than 30 Seattle-area schools during the 2003-04 school year.
The "Land and Water" program brings Seattle fifth-graders into contact with urban creeks and teaches them about the challenges these watercourses face, such as excess runoff and pollution. Armed with clipboards, the students become scientists, mapping the different types of stream flow, gauging the speed of the water (by measuring the speed of a floating twig), and testing the turbidity (cloudiness) of the water by pouring it into a tube.
The Homewaters Project conducts the "Land and Water" field trips in the Northeast quadrant of the city, with the Seattle Parks Department handling the other three major city watersheds (Piper's Creek, Longfellow Creek (West Seattle), and Taylor Creek (Seward Park). The program also addresses salmon habitat issues, with students raising salmon in their classrooms. "What we do is we connect their classroom experiences to the real world," says Versage.
A dozen fifth graders on a stream bank can be a challenging group to teach (for example, a lesson involving tossing twigs into a stream will likely lead to a round of indiscriminate twig-tossing), but Versage handles the group with patience and confidence. "Science is really fun and I love what I do," she tells the students.
A couple blocks upstream in Nathan Hale High School's crowded computer lab, Sharon London, new executive director for the Homewaters Program, is supervising as the juniors and seniors in Jessica Torvik's Ecology class add icons to their Green Maps of the Meadowbrook neighborhood where the school is located.
The students are working with GIS (Geographic Information System) files provided by the city, which construct maps in layers (first geographic features, then streets, then built structures, then watercourses, etc.).
The students' job is to locate significant cultural and natural features from wetlands to farmers markets to to "kid-friendly sites" and mark them on the map with logos. The five-week unit at Nathan Hale is currently in "input" mode, with students working to place the information they've gathered onto computer spread sheets.
As compared to the more intricate Green Maps found on the Web at www.greenmap.org, student-created maps use a abbreviated set of logos (regular Green Maps locate up to 100 different types of sites) and a smaller total coverage area about a one-square-mile area immediately adjacent to and east of the high school. At the end of the unit (in late January), the students will present a report on their findings to the Meadowbrook community.
While the Green Map program is new, "our relationship with the Homewaters program is an old one," says Torvik. The program lets students contribute their work "as a piece of the Green Mapping puzzle" while learning how to use GIS systems, which can put them ahead of the curve for their future college work, she notes.
While the community-based education program generally concentrates on environmental work, its mapping programs can be adapted to other tasks. For example, Homewaters participants mapped graffiti in the Lake City business district to aid the Lake City Task Force in its graffiti eradication efforts.
London was hired in August to replace former executive director Meredith Lorh, who still serves as the vice chair of the non-profit organization's board of directors. London brings a varied resume, including jobs in Laos for the World Wide Fund for Nature (she advised forestry officials on the creation of a protected area management system) and here in the Pacific Northwest as a GIS analyst for the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Science Center.
London is currently creating a new GIS program for younger students (eighth graders) which would enable them to document barriers to fish passage in Thornton Creek. There's also a new watershed gardening program (funded through King County grant) which will put elementary school kids to work assessing their school's water use, drafting conservation recommendations, and constructing drought-tolerant gardens.
London is a resident of the Thornton Creek Watershed.
"In Laos, I worked with local communities," says London, "but I felt I'd really like to give back to my own community."
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The Homewaters Project can be reached at 526-0187, or www.homewatersproject.org