Community Connections to a Maine Watershed

Overview

Community Connections to a Maine Watershed engages students in science and social studies through guided investigations of their community’s social, cultural, and historical connections to local watershed resources. Students look within themselves, around their community, and back through history to find out how their watershed has shaped their community, and how their community has shaped their watershed. They begin with introductory activities in watershed science and community studies, and then become social science investigators. Students conduct oral history interviews and historical and cultural research to uncover the community’s past and present connections to the watershed that forms part of its identity. Students reflect on their learning and take action through designing educational posters about their watershed, presenting them to their community, and arranging to display them in public kiosks or municipal buildings for all to enjoy. This watershed experience was developed as part of the Penobscot River Watershed Education Program, a collaborative project led by Maine Sea Grant, the University of Maine Senator George J. Mitchell Center, and the Penobscot River Restoration Trust, working in partnership with Old Town Elementary School and the City of Old Town, Maine. Fifth grade teachers and students at Old Town Elementary School piloted the activities below during the 2007-2008 school year.

Activities in this Watershed Experience:

1. Get to Know Your Community
2. Get to Know Your Watershed
3. My Watershed Connections
4. Prepare and Practice Oral History Interviews
5. Conduct Oral History Interviews
6. Cultural and Historical Research
7. Take Action: Design Educational Posters About Your Watershed!

Inquiry Level

This Watershed Experience for grades 5 & 6 students follows a Guided Inquiry Approach to instruction and learning. Teachers and students share responsibility for various components of their investigation and action projects. Teachers present students with their research question and methods. Students then assume significant ownership of their inquiry process, using team work and peer review to scaffold their learning experience. After guiding students through the process of reflecting on their investigations, identifying themes in their learning, and distilling themes into educational messages, teachers then let students drive the process of designing, creating, and presenting educational posters about their watershed to their community.

Overview of Standards

Issue

Problem Statement

Due to a variety of changes, such as increasing population density and shifts away from natural resource-based economies, many communities in Maine (and elsewhere) are losing cultural, social, and economic connections with their local watershed resources.

Background Information

Watersheds do not necessarily include humans, yet human communities have historically been defined in part by the land and natural resources that sustain them. In fact, the definition of the word community includes the environment or “common location” in which individuals live and interact.

“Com-mu-ni-ty: an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location”

John Wesley Powell, a famous geologist and explorer of the American West, noted this connection between human communities and their watersheds in his definition of the word watershed:

“Wa-ter-shed: that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community” John Wesley Powell

Today, news media, popular literature, and scientific literature are full of stories and data about ways humans, and children in particular, are losing their connections to these “common” resources that define and support our communities. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv writes, “Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment – but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.” Here in Maine, the stories are no different, and a combination of trends in growth, demographics, and economics are all affecting the situation in different ways. A 2005 report by the U.S. Forest Service projected that watersheds in Maine are among those expected to experience the highest rates of growth in population density before 2030. The lower Penobscot River watershed is number one on the list, and the lower Kennebec River and lower Androscoggin River watersheds are both in the top fifteen. This rapid growth, and other demographic trends, such as suburbanization and shifts away from traditional resource-based ways of life (including farming, forestry, and fishing) can make it challenging for communities to protect local watershed resources and retain the social and cultural connections to these resources that have defined Maine communities and Maine people of all ages for many hundreds of years. These trends may not be reversible, yet there are many ways in which engaged, informed students and community members can help protect the health of local watershed resources and reinforce community values and historical connections to these valuable assets. Another way to describe these healthy community connections is to think about them as maintaining and restoring Maine’s “quality of place,” or the special things that make Maine a unique home and a well-loved vacation destination. More information on the trends that threaten Maine’s watershed resources and “quality of place” can be found at the Web site for the Governor’s Council on Maine’s Quality of Place .

Introduction

Through group discussion and hands-on activities, students define the terms community and watershed, acquaint themselves with the land area and geographic features of the watershed in which they live, and explore their personal connections to the community and the watershed they call home.

1. What is community? Who are the members of my community?

   In Get To Know Your Community, students define the idea of community in small groups and as a class, come up with a working definition for the word, and spend twenty minutes reflecting on what it means to be from the community that they call home.

2. What is a watershed? Where is my watershed? What/who does my watershed contain?

   In Get to Know Your Watershed, students define the term watershed, and identify their local watershed using Google Earth and US Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps. Students then identify water bodies and other geographic features, human communities, and habitat types within the boundaries of their watershed.

3. How am I connected to my watershed? Why is it important to me?

   In My Watershed Connections, students use visual art and social studies skills to create maps that illustrate their personal values for local watershed resources and ways they use watershed resources in daily life. Students share their watershed maps with one another through a gallery walk.

With these introductory lessons under their belts, students are ready to become social scientists and find out how their community has used and relied on watershed resources through history and in the present day!

Investigation

To prepare for their research, students define social science terms as a class and then work in small groups to learn and practice oral history interview skills. Once they are confident in their ability to ask good questions and record formal oral history interviews, students invite community members from diverse backgrounds to take part in interviews about their connections to watershed resources. To deepen their knowledge, students then visit local cultural museums and historical collections to learn more about the history of their community’s social, cultural, economic, and political values for their watershed.

1. How do social scientists collect information through interviews?

   Students define social science and oral history as a class and then work in small groups to Prepare and Practice Oral History Interviews with classmates and teachers. Interview skills include: developing a specific oral history research question, developing and asking interview questions, taking notes, tape-recording or videotaping live interviews, taking photographs of interviewees, and transcribing interviews from tape or video recordings.

2. How are members of my community connected to watershed resources? How are their values and perspectives different from one another?

   Students Conduct Oral History Interviews, capturing community members’ stories and experiences with audio and video recordings, photographs, and hand-written notes. Exposure to the diversity of interviewees’ experiences, values, and perspectives provides students with a deeper understanding of past and current community values for watershed resources.

3. How has my watershed shaped my community, and how has my community shaped my watershed?

   Students visit local museums and historical societies, where they conduct Cultural and Historical Research to broaden and deepen their knowledge of past and present community connections to watershed resources. Students use social science research skills to record their observations and ask questions of local historians.

Armed with social science research skills, volumes of data in the form of stories and recollections from their oral history interviews, and historical and cultural information from their community research, students are ready to collect their thoughts and take action!

Student Action

The Student Action incorporates student learning and community perspectives from all of the previous lessons in the Community Connections Watershed Experience. It gives students an opportunity to organize and present their research findings. Students make a transition from learners to educators through the student-driven process of finding meaning in the work they have done and distilling it into simple, coherent messages for their community.

1. How can we share what we’ve learned about our watershed with our community?

   In Take Action: Design Educational Posters About Your Watershed! students begin by reflecting on their learning throughout the watershed experience. They then work in small groups to design and produce educational posters to share information about their watershed with their community. Students and teachers work with local municipal government to plan a presentation of the posters to community members and arrange for long-term display in kiosks at town/city parks, waterfronts, or local natural areas; or in public libraries or other municipal buildings.

Other possibilities for Student Action projects related to the Community Connections Watershed Experience:

1. Creating full transcriptions of oral history interviews and donating them to local libraries or historical collections.
2. Working with town/city public work departments to create signage with watershed maps and cultural history information at local water access points.
3. Creating a video of edited oral history interviews (with permission from interviewees), and asking the town/city for permission to put the video on the municipal website and/or broadcast them on local public access television.
4. Create a video of the students conducting their social science research and sharing their values for their community’s watershed resources. Arrange for students to present the video at a town hall meeting or town/city council meeting and make recommendations for municipal actions that would enhance stewardship of local resources.

NOAA and other resources

Oral History / Cultural Studies

• NOAA Local Fisheries Knowledge Project

Watershed Science

• NOAA Estuaries 101 Curriculum. Earth Science Module. Activity 3: Estuary and the Watershed. PDF
• NOAA’s Coastal Geospatial Data Project
• NOAA Fisheries Service. Northwest Fisheries Science Center. Watershed Program
• NOAA, National Ocean Service, Office of Response and Restoration, Watershed Database and Mapping Projects
• NOAA Estuaries 101 Curriculum. Tutorial: Using Google Earth to Explore Estuaries