Southern Urban and Interface Forests - What's New

The Kids in the Woods program in Gainesville, Florida delivers science instruction to middle school students through a series of hands-on activities outdoors on the school campus and in a nearby nature park. This article reports on the results of a 10-question pre-post assessment of students’ knowledge of the scientific process. Participants included 201 6th grade students at a public middle school participating in the Kids in the Woods program. Students improved significantly on four of the ten questions after participation in the program, indicating that students learned important terminology related to the scientific method and how to interpret a graph. The positive results suggest that using the outdoors as a platform for science education can be a valuable tool for improving the learning experience for students.

The City of Gainesville Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs presented the Star Good Neighbor Award to the Kids in the Woods team on March 26, 2019.

The Kids in the Woods partnership was recently awarded the USFS Southern Research Station Director’s Partnership Award in recognition of outstanding and innovative approaches to partnerships with the Kids in the Woods Program at Westwood Middle School in Gainesville, FL. Partners include the USDA Forest Service, University of Florida, Alachua County School District, Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs, and Alachua County Environmental Protection Department.

Proctor Creek snakes through downtown Atlanta and eventually works its way to the Chattahoochee River. Along the way it passes through both middle and lower income neighborhoods, including some of the most economically depressed areas of the city with high rates of poverty and crime. The waterway is plagued with illegal dumping, pollution, erosion, and high bacteria levels from regular stormwater flooding and sewage overflows. In 2013, Proctor Creek was named one of eleven Urban Waters Federal Partnership Projects, a project that aims to tackle the country’s most polluted city waters and reconnect communities with their waterways. The partnership works to improve coordination and focus among federal agencies on problems in the watershed, as well as promote community-led efforts at economic, social, and ecological revitalization. As a part of the partnership, SRS-4952 is conducting three interconnected studies that will provide valuable information on the links between urban greenspace, ecosystem services, environmental justice, and human health. This issue of Leaves of Change focuses on these three studies and Kids in the Woods outreach activities.

In this issue of Leaves of Change you will learn about a project that engages 6th grade students from Westwood Middle School in Gainesville, Florida, in outdoor science learning activities in the nearby Loblolly Woods Nature Park. Spurred on by a grant from the US Forest Service’s More Kids in the Woods initiative, the school project kicked off in the fall of 2013. Through this project, students are learning outdoors while also gaining first-hand experience with the scientific method—developing hypotheses, collecting data, doing analysis, and drawing conclusions. Some of the main objectives of the project are for students to become more aware and connected to their local environment and exposed to careers in science and natural resources, as well as increased teacher participation in providing outdoor learning experiences for students. Over three hundred sixth graders and three science teachers are participating in the project this year.

Click here to learn more about this project highlighted in our latest issue of Leaves of Change.
 

Check out our new Kids in the Woods blog for updates on our project with Westwood Middle School, the University of Florida, Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs, and Alachua County Environmental Protection Department. We will also be providing information about other actvities related to children and nature.

http://kidsinwoods-interfacesouth.org/

By Erin Jester
Gainesville Sun

More Gainesville students are walking in the woods this year, thanks in part to a nearly $14,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service.

Westwood Middle School sixth-graders are spending this school year collecting data on wildlife and the environment in Loblolly Woods alongside scientists and teachers.

“There are a lot of benefits,” said Annie Hermansen-Baez, a scientist with the U.S. Forest Service. Students get out of the classroom and experience the woods that are right in their own backyard.

The entire sixth-grade class at Westwood is working in Loblolly Woods, which adjoins the school.

The project is funded through the U.S. Forest Service's More Kids in the Woods initiative, and was the project funded in Florida this year.

More Kids in the Woods seeks to connect children with the outdoors. This year, the Forest Service selected about 30 projects with that goal for funding.

Also lending a hand to the project are Gainesville Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs; the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department; the University of Florida's School of Forest Resources and Conservation; and Camp Crystal Lake, which will organize a school camp-out and nighttime nature walk in the spring.

To view the full article visit: http://leavesofchangeweekly.org/2013/10/31/loblolly-woods-helps-teach-young-scientists/

Years ago, John Warner, an urban district forester with the Texas A&M Forest Service and a longtime InterfaceSouth partner, recognized that landownership patterns in the southeastern part of the state around Houston were changing rapidly. Latino, Chinese, and Vietnamese families from Houston were moving to the interface and buying 5–20 acre tracts of forestland within his rapidly growing multi-county district. He realized that the agency was going to have to change its communication approach to reach many of these new forest landowners. “As an agency, we know how to communicate with traditional landowners,” says Warner. “However, outreach to different ethnic groups is something new for us.”

In 2007, an opportunity to reach these new landowners presented itself when Warner met Tamberly Conway, a graduate student in the College of Forestry and Agriculture at Stephen F. Austin State University. Conway was working with Latino Legacy, a program established by the university and funded by the USDA Forest Service’s [USFS] More Kids in the Woods program to connect Latino communities with the public lands and forestlands in the Houston area through bilingual conservation education programming. (Conway has since been hired by the USFS as a conservation education specialist working remotely in Texas for the USFS’s office in Washington, D.C.)

InterfaceSouth and local partners, including the University of Florida’s School of Forest Resources and Conservation, the Gainesville Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Affairs, and Alachua County Environmental Protection, received funding from this year’s Forest Service More Kids in the Woods (MKIW) cost share funding opportunity to engage middle school students in outdoor science learning activities in Gainesville’s Hogtown Creek Watershed. The MKIW program supports activities and programs designed to spark curiosity about nature and promote learning through applications of science, technology, engineering and mathematics principles.

Project partners will collaborate with Westwood science teachers to conduct outdoor science learning activities and service learning projects within the nearby watershed. Partners will also organize a school camp out and participate in career day events and science fairs. Science middle school teachers will be provided professional development opportunities through a train-the-teacher workshop. Project successes, materials and information will be shared locally, regionally and nationally through our combined partner networks.

To learn more about the Forest Service’s More Kids in the Woods program and 2013 cost share funding recipients visit:

www.fs.usda.gov/main/conservationeducation/about/education-themes/kids-in-woods

www.fs.fed.us/news/2013/releases/05/more-kids-outdoors.shtml

Come to the 3rd Annual Green Schools National Conference in West Palm Beach, February 22-24, 2013. The goal of the conference is to connect like-minded and passionate education, non-profit, corporate, and public sector individuals and organizations that help advance the national green and healthy schools movement.

To learn more about this conference click here.