Presenter(s): Ned Maynard − Environmental Studies
Co Presenter(s): Kiana Seto, Dylan Plummer, Riley Olson, Ariella Dahlin, Kyra Ortiz, Cahill Shpall, Chelsea Sussman, Ned Maynard
Faculty Mentor(s): Kathryn Lynch
Oral Session 4CN
Research Area: Environmental Education
Canopy Connections 2018: The goal of environmental education is to teach through experiential, place-based activity. Through the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon, the Canopy Connections program partners with the H. J. Andrews Experimental Research Forest and the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute to create day-long field trips for middle schoolers, bringing the classroom to the forest. Our mission is to serve the community by instilling a sense of place in youth, providing our community partners an avenue to educate students about science, and reinforcing the importance of old growth forests. Our program is built around a central theme of natural cycles within the Pacific Northwest. We incorporate storytelling, tree climbing, local research, and citizen science so the curriculum is interdisciplinary and engaging. In building this curriculum, our team developed four individual activity-based stations that take place within H.J. Andrews, along with a pre-trip lesson taught in the classroom. We help the students move from awareness of their local environment to community action by fostering a sense of stewardship, wonder, and scientific discovery. By the end of spring term, we will have reached 290 students across five middle schools. These students will exit the program with a robust understanding of traditional ecological knowledge and the science of phenology, having learned their relationship through the lens of natural cycles. In order to improve the curriculum’s efficacy, we will seek evaluation through methods such as life cycle diagrams, post-trip surveys, and games that assess knowledge retention in the field.