IDNR Place-Based Mini-Grants Inspire Change
“It’s a little flippy thing, look, it looks like that, it’s a crawdad, see it tries to pinch.”
“I think you’re right, yes, you got a crawdad!”
“Alright!”
Excitement pours through a junior high school boy as he and his teacher, Merle Unkrich, examine a crawdad they caught from a Mississippi inlet tube. For this junior high school boy from a poverty level school district, where apathy and drugs have a strong hold, this is huge.
Merle Unkrich, the seventh and eighth science teacher for the Wapello Community School District has received three IDNR Aquatic Education Program Place-Based Mini-Grants. The mini-grants help pay for the transportation costs to the Mississippi inlet tubes and the purchase of thermometers, stereo microscopes, field guides, and critter nets. The students participate in a variety of activities planned and taught by the Louisa County Conservation Board - water testing, catching critters in the marshland with dip nets, fishing, hiking, and observing local wildlife.
Before the field experience Merle teaches her seventh and eighth grades classes a unit on Iowa and the Mississippi River. Students study biodiversity, ecosystems, animal species, interdependence, genetic diversity, ground water, the water cycle, groundwater quality, water quality, changing environmental conditions, and implications of environmental issues. Merle also talks about Iowa’s changing landscape and the land use. The Mississippi inlet field trip is the culmination to the unit.
Merle sees a huge transformation in these students when they get out of the classroom and engaged in real science.
“This is good for them because, to me, what it does, if they didn’t have any experience and they didn’t have anybody down here showing them, they would sit here and not entertain themselves at all. What it does is, if they ever get outside they will be able to entertain themselves. And a lot of these kids, not ever being outside, they would just sit and say ‘I don’t have anything to do’ but now they can get in and at least be curious.”
“To me this all (the field experience), it just brings everything I’ve taught all together. Otherwise it’s just this disjointed lesson plan out of a book and it’s a book that they didn’t want to read because it’s boring.”
Merle believes that teaching children to care for their local resources and allowing them to explore locally is the first step to caring about our environment for the rest of their lives. The IDNR Aquatic Education Program Place-based Mini-grants have allowed Merle to take her students out locally and foster caring about the environment.
However, there is more at work here than a science class exploring. Merle is also fostering interest, excitement, and learning from students that may have discipline issues, be exposed to drugs, and are growing up in a world dominated by computer games and television screens.
“I actually have kids come up at the beginning of the day and instead of messing around in the halls they are playing Fish Iowa (IDNR card game)!”
Listen to Merle talk about the place based approach at:
IDNR YouTube: Merle Unkrich from Wapellp Middle School
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXVwQY61fFk&list=UU7mUVEonnSIp8RB31_DxXzA&index=4
