6th grade climate champions

Sonoma Ecology Center, known for its free elementary school environmental education and outdoor programs, conducted its first pilot of the new “Climate Champions” program at Kenwood and Adele Harrison Middle School this spring.|

Sonoma Ecology Center, known for its free elementary school environmental education and outdoor programs, conducted its first pilot of the new “Climate Champions” program at Kenwood and Adele Harrison Middle School this spring.

The new program, developed to address the impact of and adaptation to the rising challenges of climate changes in Sonoma Valley. The pilot program rolled out this spring in partnership with middle school science teachers Shirley Austin-Peeke, Eric Brockway and Sheila Morrisey at Adele Harrison and Kenwood school.

The program facilitated by educators Tony Passantino and Alana Fichman includes three visits in class for activity based lesson plans. The activities include having students measure their own carbon footprint, playing out a scenario called “Game of Floods” in which students are the city planners determining what measures to take to accommodate for 8 inch sea level rise by 2050 in our community and working out solutions to increasingly common wildfires through proper land management and stewardship.

“This new program with the Sonoma Ecology Center has been a wonderful addition to our sixth grade curriculum,” said Austin-Peeke. “In a short time, they did a great job teaching the students how human activities can affect climate change and also how climate change impacts our lives. Being able to study the effects of fire on the Sugarloaf State Park ecosystem made it even more real.”

Every sixth grader from the school had a free field trip up to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park where they left off from their fifth grade Water Wonders field trip, returning back but to a new landscape after the fires ravaged the forests and hillsides. The students, guided by the docents including tree man Bob Long and Park education director Kristina Ellis, in a fire recovery walk up to the fire follower flowers “Whispering bells” in dense blooms of papery yellow petals. Students learned about the difference of a high heat white ash burn site and the more cool burn charcoal laden soil that more commonly was found at the park. In addition, students had the opportunity to voice their own views on climate change through a climate stories campaign where youth would interview and record one another on how climate change has effected them and their community. Not surprisingly, many students had a lot to say on the recent trauma of the October fires, intensified by the extreme weather patterns brought on through climate change.

A final activity included the practice of forest management as students grabbed tools and got their hands dirty, clearing out sections of unburned fuel loads around the amphitheater and campground. They used the excess fuel to create charcoal, or crude biochar, locking up a small portion of carbon into the soil and removing it from the atmosphere. Not wanting to let the heat energy from the fire go to waste, students roasted marshmallows over their combusting material as they settled in for stories on native American use of fire as a tool in their land clearing and tending.

The program is still in a pilot phase. Feedback forms and evaluations have been sent to both the students and the teachers. The information will guide the education team on their full implementation of the program to all sixth grade classes in the Sonoma Valley for the 2018-19 school year.

“Give kids a chance to learn about what matters, get them outside, allow them to collaborate, and then give them a voice,” said science teacher Shirley Austin-Peeke.

If you are interested in becoming a docent or learning more about the Climate Champions project or the Education program at Sonoma Ecology Center, contact education project manager Tony Passantino at Tony@sonomaecologycenter.org

“I’m so grateful for this community partnership,” Austin-Peeke added.

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.