Real-world science: A solutions-based approach to environmental science
- syoung679
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
“I treat my class as an environmental science research team,” said Sara Peerless. Her approach to teaching high school environmental science includes a class-wide collaboration with scientists working on the Climate Adaptation Research Lab, nicknamed CARL.
Sara’s students learn the elements of experimental design and expand their knowledge of ecology while contributing to real-world research in their community.
Sara, now a secondary science teacher on Salt Spring Island, grew up feeling as though she didn’t fit in at school and had a hard time with classroom learning. “I loved to study ecology in the forest on my own, but I was not engaged in the classroom,” said Sara.
She decided to leave her career as an interior architectural designer to pursue teaching after much encouragement from her partner and university advisors. They suggested that her lingering fears about school and formal education might work in her favour when it comes to creating safety, connection, and engaging learning opportunities for students who, like her, feel they don’t belong in school.
While covering a maternity leave for a Science 9 teaching position, Sara began to dream up her ideal course to teach: one where she could combine outdoor education, hands-on science, ecology, and research.
“I fumbled around and tried to develop something that would be approachable,” said Sara, after she was hired to teach one block of environmental science.
The course grew to include collaborations with community scientists and real-world research projects, and it generated enough student interest to warrant an additional block.
The environmental science students start the semester learning about experimental design. Students create their own classroom experiments related to their interests and learn through trial and error.
“I want students to come into this space and feel like they have what it takes right away,” said Sara. “They are scientists!”
Once students develop an understanding of identifying inconsistencies in experimental design and showcasing their findings in appropriate ways, they begin collaborating with scientists from the CARL project.
The CARL project includes a team of scientists, led by Dr. Ruth Waldick, scientist in residence at Transition Salt Spring, working to restore the Mount Maxwell Watershed on Salt Spring Island. The watershed, once a diverse ecosystem, has grown out of balance after extensive logging. Now, it mostly consists of a dense canopy of coniferous trees all the same age, an understory lacking in diversity, and few birds. The CARL team is working to establish innovative forest restoration practices that, in a time of climate change, will help diversify the ecosystem, encourage water sequestration, and mitigate wildfire risks.
“The watershed restoration is a form of reciprocity, a chance for us to not only show gratitude for what our watershed offers the people and all beings within the ecosystem but also for us to give back for all that we receive,” said Sara. She references Mi’kmaq Elder Albert Marshall’s two-eyed seeing as an approach that guides her course. Two-eyed seeing is a holistic approach to science that combines the strengths of Indigenous ways of knowing and western knowledge systems.
The class started out by taking on a whole-class soil study at the watershed, followed by a detailed soil microbiology and morphology analysis in the lab. Through this preliminary research project, students hypothesized which soil was from the watershed forest floor, which was from the Johnson-Su incinerator (a type of forest composter), and which would be most conducive to sustaining growth. Students learned how to present their findings to CARL scientists, back up their findings with evidence, and speak to scientific limitations in experimentation.
Then environmental science students got the opportunity to support the CARL project by carrying out preliminary studies that inform the work of the scientists. Students are divided into teams: for example, the terrestrial macroinvertebrate team, the aquatic macro-invertebrate team, native plants propagation team, bird survey team, bioswales team, and the hydrology team. Each team consults with the scientists to create and implement an experimental design that could be useful for the CARL project. They focus on researching something that the CARL scientists have not yet investigated, but that will be useful for the larger project.
“The kids get fired up. They know this is something the scientists are going to use and haven’t researched yet; it’s real and it’s hands-on,” said Sara.
The various research teams frequently consult each other about areas where their research overlaps and intersects. They carry out their research knowing they will be sharing their final reports and recommendations for further study with the CARL scientists and with next semester’s environmental science students. When next semester’s students start planning their research projects, they have the choice to build on the research conducted by previous students or use that research to inform an entirely new research project.
Throughout the semester, students keep detailed field journals in notebooks they made from paper bags, copy paper, and twine. They can include sketches, diagrams, data tables, notes, reflections, and any other mode of expression to make note of their learning and observations.
In addition to field journals, the students also keep novel study journals through-out the semester. Sara describes environmental science as interdisciplinary, saying, “Studying ecology includes developing a broad understanding of Earth’s elegant systems and how we interact with those systems.”
To deepen students’ understanding of human interaction with ecology, Sara has curated a list of books students can choose from throughout the semester (see below). Each book explores ecology and environmental science through a different lens. She makes physical copies and audio books available to students for accessibility.
Students then get together in small groups once a week where they discuss a question or prompt through the lens of the author or character in their selected book. The groups consist of students who have selected different books so they can learn how different authors approach ecological topics and discuss how they relate to environmental science and their work in the lab and field.
The novel study journal is a place where students can make note of quotes or statements from the books that they find inspiring or significant.
At the end of the semester, students hand in their novel study journal, field journal, a personal written reflection, and their final research report, which is presented at a science round table that includes CARL scientists.
Sara’s approach to environ-mental science creates real-word research opportunities rooted in action-based solutions. Students leave the course knowing they’ve contributed to the larger body of environmental science and have deepened their understanding of what it means to live in balance with nature.
Sara’s book list
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon
The End of Food by Thomas Pawlick
Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Stronghold by Tucker Malarkey
Plastic Ocean: How a Sea Captain’s Chance Discovery Launched a Determined Quest to Save the Oceans by Charles Moore
The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery
The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
Novel study prompt
Example prompt: How can we go beyond a culture of gratitude to a culture of reciprocity? (Inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.)
Excerpts from students’ collaborative group responses:
Humanity has an obligation to come up with solutions to problems we have brought to Earth.
Responsibility and accountability must come from large corporations.
Better knowledge of ecosystems is required to understand what can effectively and responsibly be taken and given in exchange.
