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Date: 7/27/2022
EASTHAMPTON – A new, innovative nature program for the Mountain View School is in the works thanks to a record-setting grant.
The program is a collaboration between the Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary, the Easthampton Public Schools and the Easthampton Learning Foundation (ELF), which has chose the new school as the recipient of their largest grant in the foundation’s history.
The new partnership comes as the school prepares for the first full year inside the new Mountain View building. The program includes in-service training for teachers, classroom and outdoor lessons for students and student-led projects. Through professional development, teachers will learn about outdoor education best practices, field journaling, community science, an introduction to local climate change and site-specific climate solutions.
Director of Curriculum and Grants for the Easthampton Public Schools Julie Anne Levin said from the beginning of the Mountain View School building project there were goals to utilize the large amount of green space and natural setting of the property for students’ education. While other schools have previously grown their own gardens, this new property will allow the science curriculum to add an expansion to outdoor projects that connect back to learning in the classroom.
“When we designed the building, we intentionally designed in things like outdoor classrooms, walking pathways and other landscape architectural elements that really brought out that natural design so that the outdoor spaces could be seen as educational spaces in addition to just being a lovely natural setting with a good view of the mountain,” Levin said.
Levin said when the building’s final plans were established, questions were asked about how exactly the school would be utilizing this space to benefit the curriculum and instruction. This led to discussions with the ELF, who for years has used funds to support the district’s enrichment activities.
An all-volunteer board, ELF works in collaboration with Easthampton Public Schools and community partners to support teacher-led initiatives, inspire community-based engagement, foster creativity and innovation in the classroom and beyond while creating greater equity for students in the district. To join the community and fund innovative programming in the Easthampton Public Schools, you can make a gift at elfhelps.org.
By using a mini-grant model, ELF uses their funding to support teacher and school applicants interested in trying something “above and beyond” the core curriculum. Past programs funded for the Easthampton Public Schools on behalf of ELF include the Jazz Band and support for the Model UN curriculum.
Mountain View School had started researching how they could collaborate on a project to leverage the natural spaces at the new school. This is when they were connected with Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary.
“Arcadia came up with a really beautiful proposal for creating curriculum and really thinking about the connection of the science standards to the natural spaces that are all around Mountain View School,” Levin said.
ELF then awarded the grant of $25,000 to Arcadia to collaborate with the school to create a curriculum that matches their new natural spaces and outdoor resources. Arcadia and the district are still planning professional development for teachers to understand the curriculum.
Levin added the hope is the program will be implemented in the fall.
Arcadia has partnered with the district before; in the past they have come into schools for science lessons funded by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
“We already had a relationship with them, ELF has been so supportive in the past as well and so to have ELF and Arcadia come together with us around this project has felt like everything coming full circle,” Levin said.
The curriculum will meet middle school science standards. According to Levin, early plans for the curriculum see a seven-lesson unit for sixth graders on trees and climate change. The curriculum would have students study trees around the school and invasive and natural trees within habitats.
For seventh graders, early planning has a year-long exploration of the outdoor learning spaces, study of an overflow stream bed on the property and its connection to water quality and management and gardening vegetables.
Levin hopes that once curriculums are established that it provides students the opportunity to see connections between the science they are learning and the natural world.
“That’s something that I think has not been as emphasized in this community in the past. There are a lot of active climate change folks in this area and that wasn’t getting into the curriculum or the schools as much as I think we were all hoping,” Levin said. “This is a really great opportunity to have what students are learning in their books or on their computers and actually be reflected in the outdoor world right outside their classroom. Climate change is real, and we need solutions and this generation of students are the ones who need to be coming up with these solutions so I think anything that we can do to help students interest in the natural world is incredibly important, especially right now.”