ENVS 158 :Wetlands Final Project Leticia Morris

Sharing the Wonders

of Wetlands
Wetland Education, from CSUS
classrooms to Bay Point Middle
and High School Students.

Fall, 2013

CSUS Wetland Plans

Jen Limb Runoff Race
Endangered Wetlands
Faten Tayeh As documented by the Environmental Protection
Katlin Parker Agency, the continental United States has experienced
substantial losses of wetlands at an unprecedented rate (EPA,
Paul Oviatt Water We Have Here?
Nate Litt 2011). Astoundingly, over 60, 000 acres have been lost between
the five year span of 2004-2009 alone (Ibid). And yet wetlands
serve as some of the most productive and beneficial active
Leticia Padilla Marsh Mystery landscapes on earth: one acre of wetlands can store 1.5 million
Leticia Morris
Michele Vincelli gallons of water(ECI, 2012). Hydrological, soil, and vegetative
characteristics of wetlands benefit our lifestyles for flood control,
Dr. Michelle Jon Promani, PG&E, and filtering of toxins, agriculture, treatment of wastewater, fishing
Stevens the students of Bay Point and cultural heritage, and these are only the beginning (Ibid).
Middle and High School
Take the Cypress Swamps in Florida, for example, which take
up a staggeringly small surface and yet, amazingly, can remove
up to % 98 percent of Nitrogen and Phosphorous pollution
preventing contamination in groundwater(Ibid). This is the
magic of wetlands. But they are endangered yet we cannot
afford to lose them.

All photographs are courtesy of Dr. Michelle

Stevens and Paul Oviatt.
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So how can we reduce wetland losses?

Education. Education. Education.
Bringing wetland curriculum from CSUS to Bay Point Middle School
Another organization is the
According to the National Environmental
Environmental Concern Inc.,(ECI), which
Education Foundation (NEEF), the benefits of
focuses on encouraging the education and
early environmental education to youth are
management of wetland restorations
bountiful, not only in cultivating a generation of
nationwide. (ECI, 2012). Wonderfully, upon
stewards who learn ways to protect the wetland
funding from both the EPA and U.S.
environment, but also in helping students to
Department of the Interior, Bureau of
succeed in other areas of learning within their
Reclamation, these two organizations, Project
school and community (NEEF, 2002). Alarmingly,
WET and ECI came together to mold a
however, schools designated as Title I which
wetland curriculum resource guidebook called
serve the needs of lower income communities, are
Wow!: The Wonders Of Wetlands. (Kesselheim et
some of the hardest hit when federal and state
funding cuts take effect, with estimated impacts al.,1995). With its simple and accessible layout
reaching over 1.8 million students across the nation grouped into common themes of hydrology,
wildlife, soils, habitat, human/cultural aspects
(USDE, 2012). Undoubtedly, this translates into
of wetlands (Kesselheim, et al.,1995), Wow!:
sizeable cuts to science curriculum. Given these
financial constraints to bringing about this The Wonders Of Wetlands has made it to
beneficial learning, it seems that teachers need help numerous classrooms, including Sacramento
in maintaining students access to science States Wetlands Ecology classroom where Dr.
education, particularly the science of wetlands. Michelle Stevens provided the opportunity for
Much of this help has come about through the Environmental Science Students to share in
dedication and support from diverse communities wetland wonder with middle and high school
and nonprofits across the nation. One nonprofit, in students in Bay Point, CA.
particular, is the Project WET Foundation whose
commitment to helping to share water education
with teachers and students alike has grown roots in
over 65 countries (Project WET, 2013).

Bay Point High School Students participate too!

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Back at the drawing board: choosing Wow!:
Wonder of Wetlands lesson plans that we could
tailor to the needs of our Bay Point middle
Because the Wow!: Wonder of Wetlands
educators guide had such a wealth of information, there
was no shortage of lessons for us to choose from. Still,
Jen Limb helped lead our team by coordinating all e-
mails and meetings and narrowing the scope down to
one soils, one hydrology and one animal-human-
impacted activity.
Michele Vincelli, Leticia Padilla and I chose
Marsh Mystery as a human and animal-focused
lesson plan. Marsh Mystery is essentially a who-
done-it mystery game in which students are to figure
out how an individual gets sick in their town. The
central concepts that the mystery focuses on are
bioaccumulation: the process by which pollutants build
up in the bodies of consumers in the food wed and the
role that wetlands play as filters of pollutants
(Kesselheim, 1995). I was really drawn to this activity
because it is one of many in which the students have the
opportunity to get up, move around, and act out the
process of bioaccumulation with their whole bodies
instead of only by reading it. Also, we were anticipating
cold weather on the day of the curriculum and figured
that increased movement might help encourage even
more excitement for the activity. The materials were
also relatively inexpensive: markers, a few paper plates
and colored paper. But most of all, this activity seemed
fun! We planned to set up the students each as
progressing levels of the food web like the cattails to the
minnows, all the way to the person who ends up getting
sick. My team and I imagined that acting out the food
web would unscramble the often murky concept of
bioaccumulation by integrating the real life occurrences
issue, date
The Planning
Stages
and high school students.
of pesticides and pollutions that are found in
Pittsburg/Bay Point wetlands. One of these
pollutants is Carbon Black, which was leeched to
the surrounding soils before PG&E purchased
the land from the Shell Oil Products Company
as part of mitigation plans through PG&E
(CH2M HILL, 2011).
Michele, Leticia P. and I truly wanted the
lesson to be engaging and so our strategy was to
make the Marsh Mystery story as relevant to the
students of Bay Point as possible. We crossed
out the fictional town of Cedarville and
substituted it with Bay Point, interchanging the
names of the tributary rivers known in the area,
and replaced some of the animals with ones
found in their local marshes, like The Salt Marsh
Harvest Mouse.
We encountered more than a few lines
cloaked in antiquated language that we probably
wouldnt find spoken among the families of the
students who are nourished and supported by
predominantly Black and Latino families. For
instance, one part of the story reads, Many a
summer supper came to our table from the
idlings of our youngsters! Further down, we
realized that the mystery story was set in the
times of the early British settlers of Jamestown,
even referencing Kings and Kings folly.
Although, this original tone of the marsh
mystery could be used in other contexts, the
three of us immediately agreed that this was not
one of those contexts.
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Instead, we substituted that history for the history that is often, blatantly, left out: the existence and
livelihood of Indigenous groups who have originally tended many areas that we have come to know as
wetlands. Specific to Bay Point, are the Chupcan tribe who were stewards of the land up until the 1800s
(EBRPD, 2002). Prior to the decades preceding the 1980s, when large-scale dredging took place, which
altered the natural hydrologic conditions of the area, Bay Point Regional Shoreline had been the legacy of
a strong Mexican-American community, many of who are active in farming communities and industries
(Ibid). Thus, it seemed imperative that we honored these treasured legacies in our version of the Marsh
Mystery. The beautiful words of Brazilian educator were not too far from my mind, Why not establish an
intimate connection between knowledge considered basic to any school curriculum and knowledge that is the fruit of the
lived experience of these students as individuals? (Freire, 1998).

to encourage engagement with the process, we

planned to ask students some of these questions from
the Wow!: Wonder of Wetlands guide during the mystery:
1. What do the cattails (primary producers) need to survive? _________________________________
2. Which animals eat the cattails?____________________________________________________
3. Who would eat these animals? _______________________
4. Is this enough pesticide to injure these animals? _________________________
5. Which of the animals left would eat these shellfish? ______________________________________
6. The bass eats all of the minnows, and takes contaminants. How many does it have now?
(Kessleheim et al., 1995).

Map of our wetland: Bay Point Regional Shoreline

(EBRPD, 2002)

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th
December 6 , 2013
started with hopeful anticipation
of a warm morning as our CSUS
team headed to Bay Point
Regional Shoreline. Sure
enough, with sun in the sky and
no rain in sight, we were off to a
good start because within the
next hour, students bundled and
jacketed, would be arriving to
tour the outdoors with us for as
long as weather would permit.
And permit it did! The faculty
of Bay Point Middle School and
staff members of PG&E,
including our lead coordinator
John Promani, welcomed us and
provided snacks for all of us,
ushering a warm arrival. As
soon as the first few middle
school students arrived, we were
able to introduce ourselves and
two stellar students, Estafania
and Amayah, shared with us
that they were both happy to
offer up potential homework
time during their Saturday to
join us. We admitted that the
same was still true for our team:
the appeal of time spent outside
trumps homework even in
issue, date
From Planning to
Exploring the Bay
Point
adventure Trails!
The Itinerary of our wetland curriculum
day began with a nature -walk
and journaling session with John Muir
Woods. The mud never saw us coming!
college (although perhaps they Shrub (Heteromeles arbutifolia), it
was clear that many of these
would have been happy to learn
students were far from amateur
that this is some of the kinds of
in their artistic gifts.
homework that they could look
forward to if they embarked on Further on down the route
science-education route in toward the shoreline of the
college). As soon as more Suisun Bay, we encountered our
students trickled in, including trail with more than a little bit of
the high school students who mud. In fact, all of our shoes
volunteered to help out in the were soggy and most of our pant
curriculum fun for the event as a legs were stained, and yet both
community service opportunity. the middle school and high
Once our students were school students joined in on the
accounted for, the keynote trail, feet first to the mud, dirty
speaker, John Muir Laws, kick- and not the least bit dismayed.
started the morning off with an
exercise in using our
imaginations to hone in on the
characteristics of wetlands,
including everything from the
sounds, to the vegetation to the
indications of possible wildlife.
Generously provided to all of us
were hardbound journals in
which John shared with us how
to capture details and appreciate
our sketches in their simplicity
even without color. Looking
around at some of the students
sketches of the Toyon
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Wetland Activities in Action

After lunch, we were grateful to have a few more students
join us for the latter half of the afternoon. Leticia P., Michele V.
and I went with the flow of the students and before I knew it, our
first group of students were reading the Marsh Story and guessing
how the kid from the story became ill. We even had a lively
volunteer named Shay who helped to define terms for some of the
middle school students and together they each lined up and acted
out cattails being eaten by mice and mice being eaten by larger
animals. The questions we asked the students during each level of
the wood web provided the scaffolding for deducing each
progressing level, ruling out reasons that didnt account for the
boys sickness. Michele started an awesome wetlands dance and
got the cattails moving too. We became a living wetland of sorts.
One of the best parts of the activity was when the 8th grader
Estafania, explained how the location of the wetland upstream
Activity: Runoff Race
played a role in the contaminants that reached downstream to Bay
Students get hands-on
Point. It was so wonderful to witness laughter that she shared
fun demonstrating the
when she realized that her and her classmates had just solved the
filtering properties of
mystery in a matter of minutes! When asked about how the
wetlands using pollutants were filtered and by what, we went around the room
everyday materials and heard each students take on the role of wetlands in reducing
bioaccumulation. By the second round, we wished we had had all
of the students in the same room to do a larger version of the
mystery with more students, but theres no denying that I couldnt
have been more proud of these Wetland Wonders J
In assessing our lesson plans and activities almost every
student cited that their favorite part of the day was walking
through the mud and getting their shoes dirty shredding the
stereotype that high school students are too cool for soil science.
Although this still might be the case in other settings, we did not
Activity: Water We encounter this on our adventure. Positive reinforcement of the fun
Have Here of experiencing the trail left little room for contemplation of
Students get to cleanliness. Not only did both the middle school and high school
investigate chemical students enjoy the nature walk, but also, several enjoyed acid and
and physical properties PH testing in Water we Have Here, putting their budding
scientific analysis skills to the center as they experimented with
of their local water
different PHs of household products and compared them to water
using PH strips!
from their local wetland. Coupled with Runoff Race the
students met our objectives in being able to assess that wetlands
are, in fact, the filters of pollutants and buffers in our ecosystem.
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How can we improve Marsh

Mystery for next time?
1. Spread the word to other students in the area
about upcoming Wetland Events/Increase
community outreach.
2. Incorporate even more location and
culture/specific aspects to Marsh Mystery
3. Experience the activity with the whole group
Dr. Stevens and Mr. so that the whole class can work together
Promani honor each 4. Have students parents fill out media consent
forms on site or prior to the event
participant with
5. Remember my cameraJ
Wonder of Wetland
Awards
Works Cited
Kesselheim, A. S., Slattery, B. E., Higgins, S., Schilling, M. R., WOW!: The Wonders of Wetlands: a Teachers Guide (1995). St.
Michael's: MD: Environmental Concern, Inc. & Project WET International Foundation.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). (2011). Wetland-Status and Trends Our Waters Accessed December, 2013 from,
http://water.epa.gov/type/wetlands/vital_status.cfm

Project WET. (2013). Project WET Around the World,Worldwide Water Education. Accessed December, 2013 from,
http://projectwet.org/where-we-are/

Environmental Concern Inc., (ECI). (2012). Teaching About Wetlands Since 1985, Education. Accessed December,
2013 from, http://www.wetland.org/educationhome.htm

U.S. Department of Education (USDE). (2012). U.S. Education Secretary Warns that Automatic Budget Cuts Would Hurt
Children and Families. Archived Information. July 25, 2012. Accessed December, 2013 from,
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-secretary-warns-automatic-budget-cuts-would-hurt-children-and-famil

Freire, Paulo. (1998) Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage. New York: Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers.

National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF). (2002). Benefits of Environmental Education.Accessed December, 2013
from, http://www.eeweek.org/pdf/EE_Benefits.pdf

CH2M HILL. (2011). Draft Proposed Corrective Measures Plan and Design PG&E Shell Pond and Carbon Black Area Accessed
December, 2013 from, http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/shared/environment/taking-responsibility/rehabilitated-l
ands/draft-corrective-plan-4-19-11.pdf

East Bay Regional Park District (EBRPD). (2002). About the park: History Accessed December, 2013 from,
http://www.ebparks.org/parks/bay_point