Watershed initiative receives $200K grant

Program brings together schools, National Park Service

The program has partnered with Prince George’s County Public Schools since it started in 1998. The grant is planned to help it expand and form partnerships with school districts elsewhere in the metro region, Troy said.

‘‘Kids don’t get outdoors as much as they should,” said Troy, the initiative’s program manager. ‘‘This program gets them out there and engages them in learning.”

The Bridging the Watershed Initiative was developed in 1998 through a grant from the National Park Foundation to help the Alice Ferguson Foundation service the education of high school students.

Five teaching models are offered by the program: Alien Invaders: Assessing Exotic Invasive Species; Don’t Get Sedimental: Runoff and Sediment in the River; Talkin’ Trash: Make a Litter Difference; Water Canaries: Assessing Benthic Macroinvertebrates; and Watershed Watchdogs: Assessing Water Quality.

Troy said most classes start with a lesson in the classroom, continue with a trip to a park where students can experience a lesson first-hand and finish back in the classroom.

So far, the program has reached more than 15,000 students in the Washington metro region and more than 500 teachers in 13 school districts, Troy said. The program has involved nearly 150 park rangers from 11 national parks.

‘‘We hear from kids that they had never been in a place like this and they want to come back,” she said. ‘‘The program is a critical opportunity for them to learn about the watershed.”

The grant is part of the National Park Centennial Initiative announced by President Bush in 2006 that seeks to add $3 billion in public and private funds for parks during a span of 10 years.

Clemente Macallop, an environmental science teacher at Gwynn Park High School in Brandywine had a class participate in the Talkin’ Trash program April 14 and said his students enjoyed the hands-on experience.

Macallop said he believed the program is an important way to get the children out of the classroom and into a real environmental setting.

‘‘They get to see the actual process of learning,” Macallop said. ‘‘They are dealing with an actual experiment in the environment.”

Anna Wadhams, an educator with the Bridging the Watershed Initiative who helps with hands-on teaching of field science, said the program allows students to experience real-life experiments such as taking samples from streams and learning about litter in parks.

‘‘It’s great for kids to get out in the field and make the connection between what they learn in class and what they do in practice,” Wadhams said. ‘‘I really consider myself to be lucky to be part of this program.”

E-mail Ryan McDermott atrmcdermott@gazette.net.