Supplement to the Jornada LTER Program: Schoolyard LTER

1999 Proposal for FY2000 funding
February 22, 1999

During the first year of funding, we implemented pilot schoolyard LTER sites at an elementary school in Las Cruces, New Mexico and a high school in El Paso, Texas. We are proposing to use the second year of schoolyard LTER funding to address the following objectives:

1. Continue monitoring at existing elementary and high school schoolyard LTER sites.
2. Add a third pilot at Sierra Middle School in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
3. Develop and print a guidebook which can be used to easily replicate the program at a large number of schools in the region in the future.
4. Increase coordination with other education efforts and increase involvement of NMSU graduate and advanced undergraduate students through internships and of other volunteers.
5. Increase involvement of NMSU graduate and advanced undergraduate students through internships, and of other volunteers through a local non-profit.
   

We have budgeted for a half-time coordinator who will also be responsible for assembling and publishing the guidebook (obj. 3) and coordinating volunteer activities.

Human pressures on arid lands are increasing throughout the world. Population growth rates in the U.S.-Mexico border region are among the highest in North America, yet opportunities for residents to develop an understanding of their new environment are declining. Urbanization increasingly isolates the human population from native ecosystems. This problem is exacerbated in the U.S. – Mexico border region because poverty further limits opportunities to learn about the natural environment on which we depend.

Children who grow up in poverty in southern New Mexico and West Texas generally have less access to explore nature and learn about their own backyards than children in other parts of the United States. The first step to understanding how to live sustainably in arid environments is to understand basic concepts of desert ecology and agriculture. By providing exposure to these concepts through scientific discovery, we have found that we can spark their desire to learn more and, in the process, acquire valuable academic skills in mathematics and science.

The Jornada Experimental Range has worked informally to provide environmental and agricultural education for several years. Several years of close association with schools and community groups have led to a situation in which the Jornada is no longer able to meet the demand for tours, field activities, and other scientist/student contact. When 2000-3000 students and teachers spend 2-6 hours at the Jornada each school year, these educational activities have to be considered for their impact on staffing, supplies, and the simple opportunity cost of trading research hours for outreach.

We understand the intention of the schoolyard LTER project to be to begin to create a relationship between the LTER and local schools. We have moved beyond that stage with strong relationships already in place that require more outreach than we can afford, given our other priorities. The future of schoolyard LTER projects at other locations may be similar: when teachers hear about the willingness of the LTERs to work on educational projects with students, they will flock to them. At that point, other programs will also face the burden of how to expand important contact with the schools, and they may benefit from having a model already tested that will manage the demand created by these pilot projects.

In our funding request last year, we outlined our evolving relationship with the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park (CDNP). We showed how the Park, as an independent, volunteer-supported, non-profit organization, increases our ability to more effectively reach a much broader range of students by handling many of the administrative tasks. This allows LTER scientists to spend more time in direct contact with students and teachers.

During the past year, volunteers from the park collaborated with Jornada scientists in establishing two pilot schoolyard LTER sites. One is located at the (coincidentally named) Jornada Elementary School in the Las Cruces, New Mexico School District. The second is based at Franklin High School in the El Paso, Texas District. Both of these schools have direct access to land with native vegetation. Weather stations are logging data to in-classroom computers at both schools. Data currently being collected on paired (upper and lower) 16 x 20 m plots at each school include vegetative cover and composition, and net primary productivity (for selected species). Additionally, we served over 1000 children from the Las Cruces, El Paso, Gadsden, New Mexico and Ysleta, Texas School Districts through in-school presentations and field tours of the Jornada. Jornada scientists continue to provide most of the direction for the educational programs and serve as the primary scientific contact. However, the assistance of the C DNP has been invaluable in relieving scientists from dealing directly with school district bureaucracies including arranging for access to land and scheduling transportation. Our experiences this year have reinforced the need to hire a half-time coordinator who can provide continuity in our relationships with CDNP volunteers.

1. Continue monitoring at existing elementary and high school schoolyard LTER sites.
   We will continue weather and vegetation monitoring at the two existing pilot schoolyard LTER sites and work with teachers to develop supplementary activities (including science fair projects) in association with the sites. The program is currently being used in 2d, 5^th and 12^th grade classrooms. We will also enhance internet-based communication between these two sites and the new site at Sierra Middle School (obj. 2).
2. Add a third pilot at Sierra Middle School in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
   Adding a third site will allow us to test and refine the curriculum at all three levels (elementary, middle and high school). The school selected as the new site will be implementing the first science magnet school in southern New Mexico during the 1999-2000 academic year. Students have already been selected to participate in this new program and the teachers are very excited about developing a schoolyard LTER site on the 1 ha of land (native shrubland) adjacent to the school (see letter attached).
3. Develop and print a guidebook which can be used to easily replicate the program at a large number of schools in the region in the future.
   The most consistent feedback from teachers has been a request for a "cookbook" which includes information on how to develop the site, complete the measurements, and incorporate the material into their existing curriculum. We will write a guidebook with the involvement of teachers from the three sites. The guidebook will include specific suggestions for adapting the program for use at different grade levels and include linkages to other programs.
4. Increase coordination with other education efforts.
   LTER scientists at the USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range currently run an NSF-funded 3-week training program for up to 6 local teachers/year. The program is designed to increase teacher understanding of the research process and help them to bring local science into their classrooms. Consequently, it provides a perfect complement to the schoolyard LTER program. In addition to addressing the core objectives of the program, we plan to use it to train teachers in how to develop and implement a schoolyard LTER program. We will continue to allow NSF-funded REU students to sit in on selected parts of this program as we did in 1998. We also plan to enhance less formal collaborations with the southern New Mexico SCIAD (Science Advisors in the schools) program and with other teacher-initiated projects in both southern New Mexico and west Texas.
   
5. Increase involvement of NMSU graduate and advanced undergraduate students through internships, and of other volunteers through a local non-profit.
   Beginning next year, the NMSU Biology Department will offer credit for students to work on curriculum development and to provide field support to the schoolyard LTER program. We will also enhance our use of volunteers through the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park.

June, 1999 (Tentative): Teachers from the new Sierra Middle School site will be trained through the Jornada ARS First Step program. Teachers from the existing sites and potential future sites will also be invited to participate.

November, 1999. Installation of new site and student visit to the Jornada LTER complete.

April, 2000. Data analysis complete.

May, 2000. Students complete data-sharing.