Great Stories
Montana Campus Corps:
College Students Meeting Critical Community Needs
Looking at Our Community by Andrea Kleven

While serving as an Americorps Volunteer at a local Elementary School I was able to take 5th grade students on a field trip to the local creek in the schools backyard. Students had been to the creek many times before, most recently on a water monitoring trip so they had previous experience at the creek. This time when we went in November, it was blowing snow sideways and too icy to actually get down to the creek. We used field notebooks and digital cameras to capture and describe a specific location. We went back a week later when the snow had mostly cleared, and the weather was much nicer. The students again used digital cameras and field notebooks to observe and record the changes they saw at their particular location. This on-going investigation engages children with their place, and with their community. By looking at change over time and making predictions they are engaging in the scientific process, connecting to nature, and gaining awareness of their community landscape. Being an Americorps volunteer allowed me to first hand witness these students interactions with their environment. Indeed they were the teachers more so than I.

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