The Appalachian Mountain Club's "A Mountain Classroom" program helps young people learn about forests, watersheds and water quality.
Holyoke Catholic High School freshmen took their studies outdoors working with the Appalachian Mountain Club's "A Mountain Classroom" program to learn about forests, watersheds and water quality at the club's Noble View Outdoor Center in Russell. CHICOPEE - Freshman environmental science students in Holyoke Catholic High School teacher Lise LeTellier’s class received a hands-on experience in their study of forests, with a little help from the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research Center.
LeTellier and her group of about 70 students traveled to Russell and the mountain club’s Noble View Outdoor Center to gain a better understanding of forest ecosystems.
“I had been working with Harvard Forest, and their programs matched my curriculum,” LeTellier explained. “They worked with the students to gather data and trained educators to be a part of the research as well.”
The Appalachian Mountain Club’s “A Mountain Classroom” program helps young people learn about forests, watersheds and water quality. By venturing outside their school classrooms, students were able to see first hand what is happening in their environment.
LeTellier said the trip was a good match for her classes.
“The students have been studying trees in the classroom,” she explained. “This is called phenology, and they could now see it and not just learn it.”
According to LeTellier, this was the first of a planned 10-year study involving students from Holyoke Catholic High School.
“The Appalachian Mountain Club has agreed to keep the site monitored and maintained,” LeTellier said. “The goal is to have the students study the data to determine if it is a healthy forest.”
Her students now have to look at the data to determine if what they saw is a healthy forest, according to LeTellier. “They need to analyze the data to support the hypothesis,” she explained.
Her hope is to take students to the same site for each of the next 10 years so they can carry on the study begun this year; this year’s freshmen will be able to continue the research in the next school year.
“My hope is to bring back students who took this trip to finish research next year,” she said. “I also hope to have a fall trip with a smaller group of students.”
She also hopes to do an overnight trip to gather more data.
“We’re here to do science at Holyoke Catholic, not just learn science,” she explained. “Students had the concept of going to work with this trip. They realized work can be fun.”
The trip provided the students an opportunity learn what scientists do every day in their professional lives. “It was a very engaging day,” she said. Of the 70 students who took the trip, she has received 60 positive responses, LeTellier added.
It wasn’t just another field trip for the students involved, the teacher said. “This was not an isolated event,” she explained. “The trip was fully integrated into the curriculum. It’s important as educators to realize these resources are out there to use,” LeTellier said.