INTO THE OUTDOORS: Young nature club fosters personal, academic growth

WASILLA — If there’s one thing that can get Machetanz Elementary School students eager to get to school, it’s Nature Club.

“It’s fun and it’s something I would do to get up really early,” said second-grader Ivy Erwin at the school on a sunny Thursday afternoon last week.

Nature Club adviser and resource teacher Adrian Bell (whose 10-year-old son, Ellis, and 8-year-old daughter, Ocelia, participated in the club this year) said the club grew out of a program called iTREC, or Iditarod Trail to Every Classroom. Bell and co-workers Connie Bamburg, Jenny Hoeger, Becky Hollwedel and Jennifer Jones-Molina were impressed with the method of “place-based service learning” used in the program, Bell said, and wanted to continue to provide similar opportunities for their students.

“It’s kind of hard for three separate classrooms of different grades to do that, so we kind of just joined forces,” Bell said.

As a unit, the teachers introduced the Nature Club in the fall of 2014 to educate second- through fifth-grade students on principles like “leave no trace” and outdoor safety, Bell said, which at least a few club members are already taking to heart.

Eight-year-old Elsa Rodriguez gave an example.

“Sometimes you can run away from a moose but you should never run away from a bear,” she said.

Now in its second year, the Machetanz Nature Club has entered a partnership with Great Land Trust (GLT), a nonprofit wildlife conservation organization, to not only enhance the caliber of the students’ outdoor education, but also to capitalize on mutual opportunities to get kids outside and involved in the community.

“We really want the kids to see that they can, not just go out and enjoy nature, but go out and enjoy it and take care of it so it's there for future generations,” Bell said.

Keeping the students engaged in their own learning is also important, she said. Nature Club members are close to finishing a hand-drawn brochure on parts of the Palmer Hay Flats State Game Refuge trails, and have even designed their own trail stewards to follow, cartoon characters called “Trudy” and “Stewart.”

“We let the kids kind of drive (the club) ’cause that’s how they learn the best,” Bell said.

Thanks in part to the success of the Nature Club, which boasted more than 30 members this year, the school was able to extend some of the same educational opportunities to the rest of the student body on Thursday as they celebrated “Science Day” outside all day.

After a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Wasilla Creek boardwalk — about a mile’s walk from the school — with GLT that morning, students returned to their outdoor classrooms to learn about boreal forests, alpine gardens, wetlands and even their mascot — the musk ox.

While Laura Wick’s fifth graders planted site-specific flowers with Laurie Nielsen’s kindergarteners, Musk Ox Farm Education Program coordinator Dani Bierstecker helped students dress their teacher, Jennifer Minkler, as a furry arctic bovid.

“It’s great for us to be able to get out in the community and share musk ox with people, when that’s not always attainable for everyone,” Bierstecker said.

Given the unseasonably warm 70-degree temperatures that day, Minkler quickly donned and removed the quiviut, undercoat cloak and helmet of mock horns, but hopefully with enough time for students to take something away from the activity, Bierstecker said.

“It’s pretty cool for them to experience an arctic animal here,” in the Matanuska Valley, she said.

Nature Club meets twice a month during the school year, capped with a school-wide Science Day every year. Permission slips will be passed out in the fall for next year’s club.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.