Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
to be grown, and student activities. The horticultural sections included instructions for
growing plants and described the characteristics and maintenance requirements of
each species being grown. The learning objectives needed for teachers to meet their re-
quirements across the curriculum were integrated into the student activities sections.
Student activities included journal keeping, word puzzles, various experiments, and
measurement taking (Miley and Westervelt 1994).
Throughout October and November, students, teachers, and parent chaperones
attended field trips on buses provided by the American Littoral Society. At the park,
students learned about the different plant communities being restored. They visited
the beach dune community, maritime hammock, and coastal strand. At each station,
students were given an activity. They searched for seeds in the wrack on the beach,
performed leaf rubbings in the hammock, and planted saw palmetto in the coastal
strand. At the park's nursery, students were shown how to grow native plants from seed.
They had a picnic lunch under the park's pavilions and played games before returning
to school at the end of the day.
In the first year of the program, American Littoral Society staff visited each class-
room twice during the school year. The first visit occurred after the initial field trips.
Staff gave horticultural demonstrations to reinforce lessons from the teacher work-
shop and tours of the park's nursery. Students were given containers, seeds, soil, and
fertilizer. Teachers were responsible for developing lesson plans that directed students
in plant propagation. They developed watering and fertilizing regimes based on infor-
mation they received during training and in the curriculum guide. Students were
asked to record plant maintenance activities in journals. In February, staff returned to
each classroom to evaluate the progress of seedlings. Midcourse corrections to main-
tenance regimes were made, if necessary. In subsequent years, staff only needed to
visit those teachers who had not participated previously.
The program concluded in May when students, teachers, and chaperones re-
turned to the park to plant the natives grown in the classrooms and school yards (fig.
3.4). Afterward, students had a picnic lunch, played on the beach, and received
T-shirts and certificates during an awards ceremony.
The Impact of Program Development on Community Engagement
Maintaining a good organizational structure and providing abundant, age-appropriate
opportunities were the keys to broad-based community engagement. The variety of
volunteer and educational programs developed to support the restoration project al-
lowed individuals in the community to participate at any given point in their life, from
childhood, through their academic years, into adulthood, and beyond. A high school
student who took part in Nature's Hope went on to work in Burger King's charitable
gifts department, steering company donations to the project. A volunteer participated
in the annual event and returned as a restoration leader, committing hundreds of
hours annually. An elementary school student enrolled in the Plant-A-Seed Program
came back to contribute as a high school student.
Volunteer motives ranged from opportunities for social interaction to a sense of
nostalgia, and from gaining a spiritual connection to nature to learning new or honing
