New WEN volunteers share their first field trip experience

Two new WEN volunteers share their first field trip experience on Wed. April 1st at Turah

Kirsten Kober goes to school at the University of Montana. She studies Resource Conservation in the College of Forestry. Her favorite color is yellow and she enjoys hiking in the wilderness and playing frisbee.

Gareth Griffes is currently in between schooling right now. He attended Colorado Mountain College in Leadville, CO, and is looking for a different career path. He enjoys travelling, hiking mountains, rugby, and listening to chilled-out music.

Entering our first volunteer experience with WEN, we were feeling both nervous and excited. We were nervous about teaching 7th graders (with whom we had little experience teaching), and excited about getting our youth to experience and learn about their local river. We travelled approx. 15 minutes upstream to our river-site in Turah. There, we set up our stations and quietly awaited the arrival of the bus.

As it pulled into the parking lot, we swallowed our nerves and put on our best smiles as the 20-odd students scampered down to meet us. We had decided beforehand that Kirsten and Emilie were to do the physical station, Josh to solo the bug station, and I was to assist Al at the chemical station. After our brief introduction to the class, we all split up to begin our lessons.

As I was not too familiar with the chemical station, I stayed silent for much of our first group and listened to Al's teaching for the most part. The kids themselves were pretty reluctant to try and answer any questions at first, with a few exceptions. As we got to know each other better though, they began to open up more. Explaining about dissolved oxygen and the pH scale brought back my own fond memories of middle school science. Ah, the good ol' days! I felt much more familiar with the material as the day wore on, even teaching some of our station to the second and third groups.

Kirsten worked the physical station with Emilie, she also became more confident as the kids became more rambunctious and enthusiastic. The kids enjoyed throwing the sticks in the river. Kirsten noticed that many of the students really enjoyed doing the hands-on things at the station. Even the simple things like measuring out the distance between the two stakes and hammering the stakes into the ground were prized jobs. By the third round she felt comfortable teaching the station and when she lost her train of thought Emilie was there as back up. It's really nice to have two people working the stations because if you forget something the other person can step in and help out. All in all, the kids behaved as we expected them to-- excited whenever we dealt with chemicals and getting in the water, and sometimes forgetful when it came to remembering facts.

As time expired in the third group, the kids were eager to be getting back home. We said our farewell and there was an immediate sprint to grab the best seats on the bus. We all were happy that the day had gone so well and that there weren't really any problems. The whole ride back we talked about all of the good (and unexpected) things that the students had said. My favorite quote was "Science is awesome. They should do it all over the world!".

Upon our departure from WEN, we both felt a sense of accomplishment for the work we had done and a desire to do it again as soon as possible. It was definitely a blast working with WEN!