Middle Schoolers Learn Onsite While Providing Valuable Data to Georgia Adopt-A-Stream
Finding ways to connect classroom lessons to the real world can be a teacher’s eternal quest. Last school year, Beacon Hill Middle School science teacher Mr. Bauer enrolled one of his eighth grade classes for Georgia’s Adopt-A-Stream program to monitor a section of Shoal Creek (a watershed that runs through Decatur). The students learned so much that he wanted to include all 450 eighth grade students this year. Decatur Education Foundation awarded Mr. Bauer a grant to purchase the supplies and training to allow the whole grade to participate.
The Adopt-A-Stream (AAS) program allows students to develop technical scientific skills, connect to their community, and work to solve a real-world problem that affects people in their community. Eighth graders will conduct stream monitoring activities, report data to DeKalb County Watershed Department, support clean-up efforts in our local watershed, and raise awareness about water quality issues.
We love to support these multi-faceted projects because our students are not only applying what they are learning in the classroom in a practical way, they are also providing a service to their immediate community and municipalities. The data they collect help them understand how we impact our natural systems and how those effects change our ecology over time.
What’s more, water quality issues are equity issues. Access to clean water is an important human right, and this program teaches students to be civically engaged to work towards a more sustainable world. This hands-on experience will teach students that they have agency to make positive changes, and that they can use their science knowledge to address current environmental issues.
Georgia Adopt-a-Stream is the state’s volunteer, water-quality monitoring program housed under the Environmental Protection Division. For more than 20 years, Georgia AAS has enlisted the help of volunteers like Mr. Bauer and his 8th graders to test the water quality of local watersheds, remove litter, and conduct wildlife counts (i.e. amphibians are a sign of a stream’s good health). We hope projects like these will ignite students’ passions for science and provide inspiration for their future career paths.
