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Remembering our Last Field Trip from March Last Year

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It’s hard to believe, that it has been exactly one year since the Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group’s last field trip with students. I remember this field trip well as it was with 8th grade Junior Stream Steward students from Edison School. We took them on a stewardship field trip to SFEG’s Native Plant Nursery. This field trip was memorable, as my son just happen to be one of the students on this field trip. It was a great field trip for me to be on, as I knew most of the students from outside of the Junior Stream Stewards world. My son has attended Edison School since Kindergarten, and this field trip involved all the 8th graders at Edison, many of which he had been in school with since Kindergarten. It was fun to be on a field trip and be on a first name basis with so many of the students.

It was a beautiful day, and the students were having a wonderful field trip to our Native Plant Nursery potting up new seedlings for future habitat restoration projects. Students were applying what they learned in the classroom, they were giving back to the greater habitat restoration effort in the Skagit Valley, they were working hard, they were working together, and they were having FUN! Students were crowded around potting tables (something that two days later would be unheard of!) getting their hands dirty learning about the native species they were potting.

Once a collection of potted plants started to accumulate, the students quickly learned that creating a human “conga line” to pass the plants was the best way to get the new plants into the nursery beds. Students passed each plant down the line “inspecting” it to make sure it was planted properly with enough soil and calling loudly out “good” as it passed down the line of students. If a seedling wasn’t planted satisfactorily, the student conga line rejected the pot sending it back up the line to a waiting “ambulance” (AKA wheelbarrow) where the plants needing more care were transported back to the potting benches for emergency treatment, before being placed into the nursery beds. It was wonderful to see them all working as a team to make hard work easy and fun.

The 8th graders were very efficient in their planting of hundreds of seedlings, so many students started weeding some of the older plants that were already in the nursery beds. Again, being 13-year-olds, they quickly turned this mundane activity into fun by turning on some tunes from someone’s phone, and singing and dancing as they weeded the native plant beds. 

When they were all said and done, we gathered all the students together to talk about the field trip and how it connected back to what they are learned in Junior Stream Stewards. In addition to the learning experience, they talked about what a fun field trip it was. I believe this was because it was all 8th graders from the entire school working together to make good work happen in our community.

We gathered them together for a photo…all 40 of them. And again, they had fun trying to capture of photo of them jumping and suspended in mid-air. Who knew at that time, that it would be their last photo together as Edison School students, likely the last time they were all together in one place. The next day, all schools were closed, Friday March 13th. Yep…Friday the 13th was the last day that these students attended school. That group photo from their Junior Stream Stewards field trip was used as their “class photo” for 8th grade and shared for their 8th grade “moving up” ceremony at the end of year. Because as you all know, there were no end of the school year celebrations last year. These 8th graders, now freshman in high school, have yet to return to school. They have yet to set foot at Burlington-Edison High School. We hope it happens soon. And Skagit Fisheries hopes to return to offering these fun and educational field trips to local school students again. While we don’t anticipate this happening soon, our staff and volunteers are looking forward to the day when we can interact with live students again, learn their names, and engage them in hands on activities in the field. While our staff is doing an amazing job creating interactive “virtual” lessons, like our school teachers we can’t wait to see students again in person!



 

Taking the Classroom Online

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Happy Salmon Season, folks! My name is Annika Brinkley, and I’m the Education Intern for SFEG this fall. I’m thrilled to be helping out the Skagit Fisheries team with their educational programming. 

Like everyone else in the time of COVID-19, SFEG has been making creative adjustments to continue our regular programming with safety in mind. Typically, SFEG would be putting on educational salmon programs in school classrooms around the Skagit Valley. These programs are designed to engage 3rd and 7th graders in hands-on salmon learning, and usually would involve field trips, dissections, and water quality sampling throughout the year. Fortunately, many teachers in the area still want to engage with these programs in a virtual format this school year! This year, Americorps Education Associate Olivia and I have been redesigning that curriculum to be distributed to classroom teachers in the form of videos.

Annika (right) works with AmeriCorps member Olivia to record a virtual hatchery tour for students.

Teaching students with pre-recorded videos instead of in-person interaction was something completely new to me. I’m used to speaking live, not taking a video and having to watch myself talk! Sometimes, I wonder how students ever put up with my voice, because hearing it in recordings is painful to my ears. Olivia and I have also struggled with ways to keep videos interesting, since we can’t engage in conversation or hands-on activity with our students. The process of editing videos and recordings is also tedious and involves lots of computer time. All of these limitations can sometimes be frustrating. 

Annika and Olivia filming the salmon crime scene investigation.

Thankfully, this pandemic is a time of flexibility and creativity, not just frustration! Olivia and I have had a lot of fun coming up with solutions to the struggles of online learning. Through creative thinking and corny acting, we turned our salmon dissection video into a spooky murder mystery complete with an interactive escape room. Our water quality video became a breaking news report on “KYPE 7 News”! We’re learning to laugh at ourselves, and we hope the students we reach will laugh with us too.

Annika teaching volunteers to plant at a restoration site in Hamilton.

As much as I enjoy getting creative with videos, my favorite parts of my internship have been the face-to-face interactions. I’ve been able to help with a few planting parties around the Skagit watershed this fall, and they bring me so much joy. Getting down in the dirt and mud in the morning, when my typical day is primarily screen time, is a blessing in my life. I love to see other people get as excited as me about that dirt and mud, and the trees that are going into it. I’ve also been able to teach a thing or two about salmon and the Skagit to the students at the Salish Sea School! During these last months, I’ve really learned the importance of being thankful for what I’ve got. I’ve been able to slow down and appreciate the people that I see and the place that I live. The Skagit watershed and the people that live in it are very special, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of it through this internship. I can’t wait to see what the rest of my time with SFEG has in store for me!

Thanks for reading!

~Annika

Annika hanging out with some coho salmon.

Appreciation, Curiosity, Enjoyment, and Stewardship; Engaging in Education

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As the Education Associate at SFEG, it is my pleasure and privilege to help teach local K-12 students (and the occasional adult) about salmon habitat, watershed health, and environmental stewardship. Those involved in our educational programs learn about the salmon life cycle, salmon habitat requirements, perform chemical water quality tests, participate in restoration efforts, and even see spawning salmon (most of this dependent on nature working to our benefit). These programs have been in practice for well over a decade but year after year subtle changes occur to ensure a full and dynamic learning experience. This year we have been repeatedly partnering with other organizations to bring a well-rounded experience to participating students: the Marblemount Fish Hatchery and the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center.

The Marblemount Fish Hatchery, run by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, hosts facility tours, connects to beautiful walking trails, and maintains an informative visitor’s center in addition to raising thousands upon thousands of fish each year. As a part of our Salmon in the Classroom Program, schools will receive 250 coho eggs from the hatchery to be tank-raised then released by the students. Many of these students visit the hatchery on SFEG led field trips and see a spawning demonstration, fry rearing in the holding ponds, and returning spawning adults making their way up Clark Creek to the fish trap. The staff at the hatchery have been readily lending their expertise which enriches the entire experience for students and teachers alike. Several students go from exclamations of “ew gross!” to clamoring to stick their hands in a bucket full of salmon eggs or from impatiently asking to return to the bus to “I wanna stay and look!” at the spawning adults visible along the Clark Creek trail.

Eagles nest at Bald Eagle Interpretive Center

After immersing the students in salmon at the hatchery, the folks at the Skagit River Bald Eagle Interpretive Center offer a different perspective. Salmon are in integral part of the Pacific Northwest coastal ecosystem, providing nutrients for numerous species from bears to birds to Sitka spruce trees to seals. Decline in salmon populations has caused a ripple through the food web with marked changes in several species including the transient Bald Eagle population that usually flocks to the upper Skagit River to feast on spawning salmon. Knowledgeable volunteers at the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center show students a life sized recreation of a first year eagle’s nest and narrate the careful process of selecting and placing building materials. Inside the center, students can see two stuffed and mounted eagles, eggs collected from local birds, and imitation scat from several of the area’s predatory mammals. Other students cling to binoculars and use the spotting scope to scan for eagles along the banks of the Skagit River.

Connecting the schools of children to the schools of salmon and to the more visible soaring eagles and the multitude of greenery in the Pacific Northwest are the first few links in the chain of environmental stewardship. If students can make these kinds of connections, if they can explain how their actions affect our waterways and the species that depend on them, the way they think about and engage with the natural world will change forever. Knowledge fosters understanding, understanding inspires care. It’s about way more than just salmon and these students are able to learn this.