Ryan+Tozier+Mountain+School

Curriculum Found here: []

Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest is one of the most visited forests in the country and is located 50 miles from Seattle, making it an ideal location to help get students into the woods. The park has many puts on some programs itself through the United States Forest Service and with partners with whom they set up more specific programs. Partners include: Seattle City Light, Skagit Fisheries Enhancement Group, Skagit Cooperative, Skagit County, Skagit Land Trust, Washington Trails Association, Pacific Northwest Trails Association, North Cascades Institute, and North Cascades National Park.

 The program I will be reviewing is the Mountain School program to provide watershed-based conservation education put on by the **North Cascades Institute. ** [] and []

The goal of the North Cascades Institute is, “North Cascades Institute seeks to inspire closer relationships with nature through direct experiences in the natural world.”

The educational goal of the North Cascades Institute is, “Our goal is to help people of all ages experience and enjoy the mountains, rivers, forests, people and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest – so all will care for and protect this special place.”

For their program for 4th-6th graders the learning objectives includes natural and cultural history of the North Cascades through hands on educational activities. Activities that teach about the local mountain ecosystems and more specifically: wildlife of the North Cascades, biodiversity, food webs, glaciers and geology, watersheds, cultural history, ethnobotany and forest ecology.

The Mountain School is designed as a 3-5 day program and through both their hands-on teaching and content on the days should teach students the intended learning outcomes. The major drawback to this program is how limited it is in terms of time. For that reason the program maybe overly ambitious unless it is masterfully executed. That said this curriculum will should succeed in teaching students about the local ecology by hiking on the trails and exploring mountain ecosystems. I don’t feel like their hands-on activities for math, art, and social studies will be as effective in such a short time.

This curriculum teaches students several of the EcoEd literacy goals including: the capacity to conceptualize complex causation; understanding of the challenges and value of cooperative action; understanding of different scientific disciplines.

While exploring the wilderness teachers could explain the environmental impact the humans have had on the area and telling them the different disasters that have occurred, so that students can learn about decision making failures. They could also teach about the possible future of their ecosystem should society not change current practices of waste that are causing climate change. This would help them understand both how their actions affect close and far off events but how they are affected.