Day 3- Water

DAY 3 

Water Reclamation Facility

This facility was impressively new, innovative, and advanced. I was surprised by how efficient their system seemed to be working. A few things I was really impressed with was the fact that they use microorganisms to eat solid waste and then trap the methane gas by-product of those organisms to power their plant! Talk about productive. This facility has seemingly found a solution to each of its challenges. For example: 

Microorganisms produce excess methane gas --- the facility found a way to store and use that gas. 

There is excess solid waste at the end of the water cleaning process --- the waste is treated and sold back to farmers as fertilizer 

Treatment plants often produce a foul odor- fans pipe the smell into a basin of damp cedar wood chips that absorb the air. 

AMAZING! 

I think it would be really cool to show students how engineers face problems and then come up with solutions. Teaching problem solving skills is a huge concept that starts in 4th grade and it would be awesome to show students that it is applicable for the real world. 

At the Water Reclamation Facility I realized how much of an impact I have on our local community. Not only do my actions affect our water supply- it affects the daily lives of the workers who have to clean and sort through the sludge that is flushed through our pipes.

Preparing students to be respectful citizens is a difficult task. Especially for students who don't have all of their needs met. I firmly believe that Maslow's hierarchy of needs (research, objective 5) is critical in understanding our students lives. Having taught at a school with a lower SES and high trauma rates, I can see where my students wouldn't be as interested in learning about water treatment. The last thing on their mind is how to protect our environment when their own environment is unstable. Visiting a local facility, however, is a very large first step in the right direction to open their eyes to the importance of being good stewards of our community. If kids are able to go witness what happens when they flush the toilet, it may enlighten them to the fact that everything we do has an impact on our surroundings. I have no doubt that being at the facility would have a much greater impact on student understanding than if we were to just teach it from the classroom. (Objective 4)

Not only was the tour itself valuable, but the facility offered several resources for teachers to take and use in lessons and to support curricula.

Bear Lake Field Trip 

The 5th grade field trip to Bear Lake included 6 stations where students were able to learn the value of conserving water, protecting the air and water from pollutants, and how our SVRP aquifer plays a role in the water cycle. The different stations offered so much valuable information for students about environmental sustainability and provided students with hands-on opportunities to understand the importance of protecting our aquifer. This is definitely a field trip that I would love to implement into my school year if possible, I think students really benefit from the content presented here. The only change I would make is to have it at the beginning of the year if possible so that we could further develop the concepts throughout the year rather than having them learn all of this right at the end. In order to really develop skills and practices of sustainability education, teachers would benefit from having these stations be their foundation and then building on that through further explorations in the classroom. Another cool thing to do if this were in the fall would be to have students develop a way to track their water usage throughout the semester, and implement ways to reduce it. A long term project to implement good habits could make a huge difference in their consumption of water. The students also had a station on composting, and they might be interested to start a composting bin in the classroom if the trip were at the beginning of the year.
  After attending a field trip like this,  it would be easy to integrate English Language Arts to have students write informational pieces about water, or conservation in general. 4th and 5th grade both have a CCSS for information writing, "Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly." (Objective 2)