Red Bank Elementary students visit Mountain Creek, which abuts the school's property, for real-life lessons about the environment and how they can impact it. (Contributed photos)Red Bank Elementary School is partnering with environmental organizations in the community in an effort to clean up Mountain Creek, which was once so unhealthy that it was nearly uninhabitable by wildlife.
Working with organizations that offer programs educating students on their relationship with nature and how they can lead the next generation in preserving the environment, the school's "Stream Team" set out to change this - and change it they have.
Students on the "Stream Team" watch area professionals study the land, create strategies and execute real-world skills right in their backyard. Mountain Creek is literally adjoined to the property, so all it takes for a hands-on lesson is a short walk to the project site.
By studying the stream, students get an up-close look at how the environment reacts to human involvement and how animals modify their behavior based on the health of their surroundings.
"My favorite thing is seeing them get excited about finding a critter," said fifth-grade science and social studies teacher Margaret Hall. "I also love watching them make connections when I ask them to look for evidence of flooding. They see the muddy bunches of leaves on the bank and begin to understand."
This type of project-based learning is interwoven with curriculum topics like human impact and animal adaptation.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation recently awarded one of the team's community partners, local water quality advocacy group TenneSEA, with $78,500 in order to continue making the Mountain Creek watershed a safe resource for the community.
The Stream Team was started last year by Masey Stubblefield, a former fifth-grade teacher who saw a need to implement community beautification, conceptual learning and environmental awareness.
Red Bank Elementary students visit Mountain Creek, which abuts the school's property, for real-life lessons about the environment and how they can impact it. (Contributed photos)During the project's first year, the group focused on testing and assessing the health of the water. Then, they got to watch as their mitigation began to visibly improve the environment, marked by the return of minnows, crawfish and dragonflies to their natural habitat.
This year, students are digging deeper into the concept of human impact by exploring the effects of erosion. The elementary school parking lot near the creek could pose a problem with water runoff, so the Stream Team is learning from environmental engineers about ways to keep the area from completely eroding.
"The kids are exposed to a type of engineering that doesn't just involve buildings and bridges, but one that works closely with environment and population growth," Hall said.
The Stream Team is a project that Red Bank Elementary hopes to continue year after year, not only to protect the water, but to promote civil involvement. With the help of fifth-grade mentors, younger students are also being made active participants in the future of both the environment and humans' relationship to it.
"These students are extremely motivated," Principal Haley Brown said of the Stream Team, for which students had to submit an application in the fourth grade. "This program gives them the opportunity to meet people with similar passions and realize that they can turn [their passions] into a career."