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| Digging the birding experience |
When we at the Bird School Project set out five weeks ago to pilot our brand new life science unit for schools in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, we hardly knew what we were about to achieve. For us, we simply get excited to share the wonder and curiosity about birds with young people. But in the last five weeks, we accomplished much more.
I must admit, we didn't keep all of you lovely supporters updated with our weekly successes because to be honest, we were just too darn busy teaching all of the time! But here it is, written especially for you--a special blog update about what we've been up to.
On October 5th, we unveiled our five-week life science unit and brought the Bird School Project back to life after a ten-month hiatus. We partnered with four schools, five interns, and almost 600 students and employed a brand new curriculum complete with outdoor experiential activities and a guided journey into the scientific process of natural history. We were warmly received by every school we worked with and have already been asked back...by all of them!!!
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| Taking field notes on some common yard species |
This marks a major triumph for us as a fledgling organization. It has been made clear to us that the experiences we provide are desired and appreciated by teachers and students at large. This success has showed us how important our work is and how important it is that we continue it.
In addition to giving ourselves a pat on the back, we want to extend our deepest gratitude to our affiliated teachers. All of these teachers believed in us and allowed us to pilot brand new lessons with their students. For those non-teachers out there, it takes an impressive amount of trust, respect, and initiative to allow such a new program to take over your class for five weeks. These teachers not only allowed us to come in and teach, they also advocated for us to get some funding from their respective school boards and succeeded! It has been a humbling experience to work with such inspiring educational professionals and we couldn't be more thankful for their willingness to give us a shot and show what we can do.
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| Our teachers! Clockwise from top left: Mr. Stauffer and Ms. Steisslinger from Gavilan View Middle School, Mr. Cutter, Mr. Webb, and Ms. Wayte from New Brighton Middle School, Mrs. Lowe from Main Street Elementary, and Ms. Gorin and Ms. Colleen from La Joya Elementary |
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Getting to watch a pair of
Red-tailed Hawks--the school mascot! |
Our life science unit included five lessons, each focused on a different aspect of bird studies and naturalist skills.
During the first week, we focused on bird identification, journaling, and honing our observation skills. We worked in the classroom and discussed the various characteristics to look for in birds, how to journal about our observations, and then we went outside and put our skills to work! We had a great time exploring the various schoolyards and looking up birds in our field guides.
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Getting inspired by a hunting
White-tailed Kite hunting! |
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| Watching sparrows in the school garden |
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| Which birds did we see out there? |
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| What's making that sound up there? |
During the second week, we focused on bird sounds and bird language. We got to hear some stories about bird language and how it relates to finding cool predators on the landscape and we learned about birds' branched vocal chord called a "syrinx" and showed students how it worked using Cornell's interactive Bird Academy program. After our classroom portion, we got to go outside and listen for real life examples of bird sounds.
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| Getting to check out the high-speed wings! |
During week three, we dove deep into feathers, flight, and adaptations. We were able to borrow loads of wing and feather specimens from the Ken Norris Center for Natural History and brought them into class for some hands-on learning. Students got to observe, touch, and flap various wings and feathers and learned about the different uses of feathers with regards to flight, insulation, and color. We even brought in a big fan and students had the chance to feel what lift feels like first hand!
During week four, we learned first hand what it is like to migrate across the country. Students learned about the phenomenal journeys that birds take and the various hazards that affect them on their respective journeys. We played a huge game of migration tag where students had to avoid hazards, find habitat, eat food, and move as a flock up and down the Pacific Flyway. We finished up this lesson by having a practical discussion about what hazards to birds are out there and what we can do to help.
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| Feeling flight first-hand |
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| Birding in the yard with Kevin |
Finally, for week five, we put all of newly acquired skills to the test and had a Big Day of birding! We noted our observations, counted birds, and then uploaded our observations to the citizen science website eBird.org. All of our observations went straight to scientists at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology will be used to help track bird populations and make more informed policy decisions about bird conservation. We then used the newest citizen science website YardMap.org to get a bird's eye view of the schoolyard. This website uses GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to map out yards and help citizens create better habitat in their yards. During this lesson, students really got to see how their work as observant naturalists can be applied to the real world.
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| Broad wings taking flight with Devin! |
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Taking notes on the high-aspect ratio
wings of gulls |
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| The migration game |
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| Good to see Kevin back on the saddle |
Did we mention we're back on our bikes? For the schools that are close enough, we have been riding our bikes with our trusty binocular trailer and it feels great! The original vision of biking to schools is still alive with us. Here is a shot of Kevin riding with his mended arm in the pursuit of providing bird education to the local kids. Go Kev!
Thanks so much for reading. We hope to keep you more informed as we continue our journey of growth. Be on the lookout for some updates about our upcoming fundraiser!
