OLC gives gateway to water quality education – Gazette News

CONNEAUT – Becky Donaldson, in her position with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, expressed that she would love the opportunity to get some students into a stream.
A-Tech Career Education Coordinator Denise Miller responded that Donaldson should be careful what she wished for, as that hope could might very well become a reality.
Miller made good on her word as she paired Donaldson, stream quality monitor for ODNR, Suzanne Westlake, director of Ashtabula County Soil and Water, and Tim Gary of the Outdoor Learning Center with Gateway Elementary to give fifth-grade students an opportunity to explore the creek at the OLC on Monday, Oct. 20.
Miller took it a step further and invited Amberly Barry, Northeast Ohio partnerships and engagement specialist for The Nature Conservancy, to provide hands-on classroom experience.
“This is a really special day,” Miller said. “The plans started last year at Career Day. Throughout the summer, as we entered this school year, I remembered, and I just thought, ‘What an amazing experience this would be for kids.’ In science, they’re studying ecosystems and habitats, food webs, food chains. What better way to learn about something than to be immersed in it all? It makes that learning purposeful and memorable. To bring the kids out here, all of a sudden, the standards that the teachers are so laser focused on teaching, what they’re required to teach, their content becomes real.”
Miller wanted to ensure the students received a memorable lesson.
“I think (the students’ enjoyment) is the most important part and, really, the missing piece to education, because too often, students are sitting in a desk in a classroom where they can see pictures or read out of a textbook whereas, out here, everything is at their fingertips,” Miller said. “There is nothing that can compare to being immersed in it. That learning becomes purposeful and real, and instead of sitting in the classroom wondering, ‘When am I ever going to learn this in life, or why are we here? Why am I learning this now,’ they see it in a real environment. This is where it becomes real to them.”
Just the Gateway fifth graders participated in the event.
“There are six classrooms, and every classroom is spending 50 minutes (out here),” Miller said. “We would have loved to extend it and made it longer, but making it all fit inside of one school day, we gave them 50 minutes in the creek. Then, we have Amberly Barry from The Nature Conservancy. She has a lesson where they’re examining specimens and drops of water under microscopes. She tied it right to ecosystems and habitats and the food chain. They’re seeing a drop of water from this creek under a microscope when they go in the classroom, as well.”
Having the students leave the classroom and receive lessons outdoors is a valuable piece of education.
“It’s that missing piece of education,” Miller said. “Even with the Outdoor Learning Center in their backyard, we have students who have never been into the woods, and they’ve never been out here through these trails. And now, when you have somebody explaining the trees and identifying the trees and how sassafras oils are used, and witch hazel is right here, you can buy that off of a shelf at any, pharmacy or drug store. All of these special plants that are native to our communities, it’s the science that they never really understood. Now, they’re bringing it to life.”
Having the students explore the Outdoor Learning Center is vital to educating children.
“It’s critical,” Westlake said. “It’s absolutely critical because once you experience nature, then you know why it’s important to save nature. If you don’t know why a creek is important, then why would you care if it gets polluted? It’s absolutely critical to get them exposed, to get them to see how great it can be out here, to be able to conserve it in the future.”
The Outdoor Learning Center is the perfect location for learning about nature.
“(The Outdoor Learning Center is) invaluable,” Westlake said. “You can’t put a price on it, honestly. This is fantastic to be able to take kids out here, to have a space for them to feel safe and to be able to experience this.”
The Outdoor Learning Center was pleased to host the event.
“It’s wonderful,” Gary said. “I wish we could have this once a month out here, have this much interest from the kids, because Matt Crawford, who was the founder of this place, that’s what he envisioned. That’s why he established it. It does my heart good to see this happening. It really does.”
“It feels so good when you can share with somebody else and, particularly, these kids are a blast and so enthusiastic about things,” Gary continued.
The other piece to the event was that the Gateway students were able to learn a little about careers that might have them working in the very creek they were walking in.
“You’re taking a piece where kids are wondering, ‘What do I want to do for a job or career?’ At this age, all I’m trying to do is to help them figure out what they’re interested in,” Miller said. “Those kids here, every class, it’s been 100 percent they want to be out here.”
“Ohio Department of Natural Resources, you hear ODNR, and even I didn’t realize all of the different branches,” Miller continued. “When you take Becky Donaldson, who is a stream quality monitor, she specializes in just streams, we had somebody specializing in turtles or tortoises. Amberly with The Nature Conservancy, she’s well-rounded in all areas conservation. How many jobs and careers deal with conservation? Now you take that broad concept of science and you realize that there are so many different little narrow pathways and jobs and careers related to all of those pathways.”