By Phaela Peck and Nikki Muench May means summer is fast approaching and it also signifies the end of The Watershed Project’s school year education programming. This year we served a record 1,606 students in Contra Costa, Alameda and San Francisco counties! Students in grades K-12 engaged in watershed education lessons and spent time in local parks. Climate Corps AmeriCorps Fellow Nikki Muench and Education Manager Phaela Peck developed and piloted new lessons, took hundreds of students out in nature and mentored Wild Oysters interns. The Watershed Project’s education team’s goal is to …
Ebb & Flow
The Newsletter of The Watershed Project
Watershed Voices: Education Interview with Nikki
By Nikki Muench I started working at The Watershed Project as a Climate Corps AmeriCorps fellow in December 2016 as part of the Education Team, teaching and redesigning curriculum and offering program evaluation development for the high school programs as well as elementary and middle school programs. Growing up in Albany, California and spending countless weekends at the beach and camping among redwoods shaped me into an environmentally-passionate person who still hopes to enjoy jobs that let me be outside. I earned a bachelor’s degree from UC Santa Cruz in environmental studies and …
Wild Oysters Internship Perspective: Looking Back at the Semester
This spring, The Watershed Project had the pleasure of hosting three interns as part of the Wild Oysters Education Program. Over the last five months, Alex Hartnett, Tyler Glaser and Kunal Mehta have supported the Wild Oysters program by attending classroom lessons, instructing students on oyster data collection at Point Pinole, and researching material for Wild Oysters lessons. At the start of their internship, they participated in two training sessions to begin their introduction to native Olympia oysters. Wild Shorelines program manager Helen Fitanides walked the interns through oyster …
What’s In Your Watershed: The Gray Fox
By Lauren Woodfill The education team’s busy schedule often takes them out on field trips and lessons, but one member of the staff always sticks close to the office: the gray fox! This shy creature has made its home under the education building, and every few weeks, a hushed call ripples through the office: “Look out the window! The fox is back!” Quickly, quietly, we all rush to catch sight of the adaptable gray fox. Gray foxes, Urocyon cinereoargenteus, are one of the many animals forced to adapt to the rapid changes in the Bay Area. With urbanization shrinking or isolating their …
Sara’s Experience in the Green Collar Corps: Watershed Voices
by Sara Gurdian During my high school journey, I became well aware of the fact that I played a critical role in my society. Like many may say, “be the change you want to see”. So here I am, a 19 year old Guatemalan woman, interested in social issues, nature, education and working to change the role that women are imposed to have in society. Soon after I graduated from Richmond High School, I finally got to show off some of the skills I acquired in Earth Team internships where we worked on creek restoration and Urban Forestry. We also conducted our own street cleanup and organized our …
North Richmond Resiliency: Shoreline Tour and Community Visioning
By Jesse Brown It is possible that in your lifetime there will be less beach, marsh, and other coastal landmass then there exists today. The warming of our planet has already caused a small rise in sea levels, and many climate scientists predict that the ocean will continue to rise, submerging more and more shoreline area. The latest estimate suggests that by 2100, the sea level could be as much as three feet higher that current levels. In the Bay Area, this means that a significant amount our shoreline could be underwater. As the climate changes, so will our coasts. While there will be …
Sustainable Lunches in Albany: Students Bring Awareness to Albany Restaurants
By Miles King, The Watershed Project Intern and Albany High School EDSET student This spring, students at Albany High School (AHS) have helped The Watershed Project (TWP) in an outreach effort to encourage Albany restaurants to adopt more environmentally friendly practices and reduce litter. The “Sustainable Lunches Earth Day Campaign” is a multi-pronged initiative, created by Paula White at TWP, in preparation for Earth Day shoreline cleanup at the Albany Bulb on April 22nd.TWP will host an Earth Day shoreline clean-up at the Albany Bulb to reduce trash going into the Bay, as part of its …
What’s in Your Watershed: Eelgrass in the Bay
by Helen Fitanides Neither eel nor grass, eelgrass (Zostera marina) can be a little confusing to get to know. Adding to the mix-up, eelgrass is a marine angiosperm: it is a flowering plant that lives in marine or brackish waters (where fresh water mixes with salt). Eelgrass is actually the most common marine angiosperm worldwide, occurring along both coasts of the United States and Canada and through Baja. Suitable eelgrass habitat has a sand or mud bottom, low wave or current speed, and relatively clear or shallow water so it can “see” the sun to photosynthesize. Eelgrass grows a network of …