National park hosts local students for science program

DENALI — Fifth- and sixth-grade students from the Mat-Su Valley and around the state have been escaping the classroom for days at a time in the northern wilderness.

With chaperones, of course.

The Denali Science School program caters to elementary and middle school students prepared for three days and two nights in the Murie Science and Learning Center, hiking and learning science lessons through hands-on activities in the Alaska wild. From Sept. 8 through Oct. 10, 11 schools participated or will participate in the field trip, which includes a visit to the Denali dogsled kennels, a day spent deeper into the park and day- and nighttime science and team-building activities with park rangers and Alaska Geographic educators, according to a Sept. 18 press release.

“Historically, we’ve been really good at reaching youth within the Denali borough, but in recent years we’ve wanted to reach the larger Alaska youth community,” said MSLC Education Coordinator Sierra McLane.

However, since traveling to Fairbanks takes the better part of a day for Valley residents, park staff endeavored to create a residential program in which students would have a long enough period of time to be immersed in outdoor science learning, short enough to not be overwhelming for fifth and sixth-graders, McLane said.

Tamra Harrison at Talkeetna Elementary said her students were “the guinea pigs” for the program in the fall of 2012, when park staff visited their school and “threw out the idea.” The following spring, Harrison took some students to the park overnight. It “worked out well,” she said, but there was still a little fine-tuning to do.

“They took a year off, rebuilt the program with a lot more detail, a lot more activities,” Harrison said.

Thus, the “school” was born.

“We have two main themes for Denali Science School: systems and stewardship,” McLane said. “Throughout three days, we build from the ground up students’ understanding of everything from Denali ecosystems to how we manage the park.”

McLane mentioned probing for permafrost and using radio telemetry to track wolves as some of the specific skills each group learns to do, but perhaps the most significant activity is the one that gives the students the most autonomy.

“Students become superintendents,” McLane said. “They create their own national parks and present on them. They have to use realistic habitats, show that they understand parks using scientific tools and manage their parks on behalf of wildlife and park resources.”

Harrison said Talkeetna Elementary sends fifth- and sixth-graders on an “experiential field trip” every year — such as fossil hunting in Sutton or visiting NOAA’s Kasitsna Bay Laboratory on the Kenai Peninsula — so the Denali program fit perfectly with their already-standing curriculum.

“The kids in Talkeetna have wildlife all around them you know, I mean we’re right at the base of the (Talkeetna) mountains, but I was surprised how many of them had not been into the park,” Harrison said of her students. “To be able to provide them with that opportunity, that was really beneficial.”

That opportunity wasn’t a given, either. Though the program itself is free, schools still have to be able to provide their own transportation, which even for the group of 18 — the school can take up to 30 at a time — can be expensive. With community-wide fundraisers prior to the field trip, however, Talkeetna Elementary was able to raise enough money for its students to take the train from Talkeetna to Denali.

Kelly Dau, a math teacher at Houston Middle School, took her students via school bus, since the train had stopped running for the season, but their trip went just as well, she said.

“We were fortunate, the weather was amazing,” Dau said.

The group was able to see Mt. McKinley twice on their drive up to Denali when they rested along the way, a sight most of her students hadn’t seen before. Of the 29 kids in attendance, Dau estimated that only five had been to the park before, and it was a first-time visit for several chaperones as well.

“It’s amazing how difficult it is for our children to get out,” Dau said.

The lessons were fun, too, she said. Learning to identify animals by rubber molds of their tracks and scat, followed by stuffed toys of the related animal — which park staff laid along a hiking trail for the activity — was particularly memorable.

“You should’ve heard the kids go after a red squirrel and a gray jay, once they knew what those were,” she said.

Dane Bailey and parent chaperones from Amazing Grace Academy in Palmer took 13 students on the trip, in conjunction with Cantwell and Anderson schools, since they brought just eight fifth- and sixth-graders between the two of them. Half of the Palmer kids, he said, had not been to the park before.

Bailey said his students especially enjoyed the dogsled activities, and though he wished there had been just a little more outdoor time — instead of in the learning center — it worked well as the academy’s one big field trip of the year.

“I would totally do it again,” he said.

Students from Sherrod Elementary also participated in the program, as did Fairbanks students from Woodriver and Pearl Creek elementary schools; students from Seward Elementary and Anchorage’s Tudor Elementary, and an IDEA homeschool group from Fairbanks.

The Murie Science and Learning Center is located in Denali National Park, Mile 245.1 Parks Hwy.

For more information call Sierra McLane at 907-683-6436 or visit 1.usa.gov/1vKaCDl.

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