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 Seattle's urban students are getting out of the classroom and into nature. Servicing Seattle middle schools with diverse student populations, such as Madrona K-8 and Meany Middle School, the Burke Museum’s Magnuson Outdoor Learning Laboratory (MOLL) connects underserved, underrepresented urban students with nature.
Now in its fourth year, MOLL has given over 300 Seattle middle school students the unique opportunity to practice critical science skills while giving back to their city through habitat restoration. In recognition of the achievements of this program, the Environmental Education Association of Washington named MOLL a 2007 winner of its Community Catalyst award. This innovative partnership between the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department, Seattle Public Schools, and EarthCorps, provides an exciting, new, sustainable model for environmental education and service programs for Washington State.
With increasingly demanding education standards enforced by the national No Child Left Behind act, students and teachers are facing mounting pressure to enhance classroom performance. The MOLL experience provides a solution, allowing Seattle students to develop critical science skills in a field setting, where students not only practice field techniques, but also design their own real experiments by identifying a research question, making quantitative observations, recording data, collaborating in a research team, analyzing data, and then presenting the results.
 Over the past three years, students have contributed a combined total of almost 2000 hours of community service restoring the natural habitat of Magnuson Park. Through their work, students not only learn about, but also become personally invested in, the immediate environmental crises that affect our city’s parks and shores, such as pollution and invasive species.
Participating sixth grade science teacher, Thatcher Wood, of Madrona K-8 school said “It’s a blast for the kids. MOLL gives the Madrona students an opportunity to get out in the field with real scientists and not only do excellent science, but interact and learn from positive, professional, adult role models.”
“The MOLL program provides an opportunity for students to learn by doing and to create a connection with the natural world with authentic guidance. They learn that restoration can happen in their own backyard or in a park and that anyone can do it. Given the restoration needs of Seattle's forests, we love planting a seed in the minds of as many young people as possible, so in the near future we have stewards for our city's parks and green spaces,” comments EarthCorps Program Director and MOLL partner, Su Thieda. |
