Last updated: March 11, 2021
Article
For This Week, A More Personal Note on Education in Watersheds
NPS / Alex Iwaki
March 9, 2021 - Hi, my name is Dustin Geisen and I am part of the San Francisco Bay Area Network fisheries crew. I serve here through the California Conservation Corps Watershed Stewards Program in partnership with AmeriCorps (WSP). The Watershed Stewards Program is dedicated to improving watershed health by actively engaging in restoration science, civic service, and community education while empowering the next generation of environmental stewards. If you are a returning reader, you’ve probably read about some of the ways I contribute to that goal in Point Reyes like the spawner surveys or salmon diet study I participated in.
Today, I am excited to share about a specific part of my service that I started this week: teaching for a WSP education series called Wonders of Watersheds (WOW!). As a guest lecturer at a local title one school, I teach and engage students about watershed ecology and conservation. Unsurprisingly, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly changed how I go about this. A normal WOW! series can include a wide array of activities for students to participate in, ranging from field trips and fish dissections to innovative games and interpretative dances. Distance learning truly upended this dynamic, forcing me to reconsider the best ways to make my lessons not only informational, but also fun and exciting.
Thankfully, the modern age is full of various apps and websites that provide a diverse toolset for making lessons. For example, a lesson about the life cycle of salmon can be followed by an invigorating quiz game or a word cloud that can help students participate in a lecture about conservation without breaking the lecture’s flow. Students themselves are quick to pick up on these new teaching methods and there is an apparent enthusiasm for science among them.
I am massively encouraged by the students that I teach. Their desire to learn and participate despite the difficult transition to distance learning is so heartwarming. I continue to look forward to my lessons and hope that students’ passion for watersheds will last long after my WOW! series is over.
A program of the California Conservation Corps, WSP is one of the most productive programs for future employment in the environmental field. WSP is administered by CaliforniaVolunteers, the Office of the Governor and sponsored by AmeriCorps and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.