Lots of good things going on here for the summer, please read for important news and announcements for the Schoolyard community. If you read until the end you’ll be treated to a video of baby gray foxes that were living under my shed this spring.
Summer Institute
This year our Summer Institute will be held on Monday August, 18th and Tuesday, August 19th.
August 18th: Participants will learn the basics of the Schoolyard Ecology protocols. Aimed at educators new to our program (so share this announcement with a teacher friend!) but you all are welcome to come for a refresher or to add a new protocol to your repertoire of data collection with students.
August 19th: Participants will take part in a workshop delving into the new curriculum to be developed by our RETs (Research Experience for Teachers) on methane cycling in forest ecosystems (see below for more details).
Register for the Summer Institute (Day 1 or Day 2, or both!) here
Educator Spotlight
Meet Tara Goodhue, Science teacher at Lowell High (and FINALIST for Massachusetts Teacher of the Year!). Tara has participated in Schoolyard Ecology since 2017 and has been one of its biggest advocates.
Tara has published a chapter in the book Educators' Work Integrated Learning Experiences (2024), “Work Integrated Learning in the Forest: The Journey of a Science Educator,” as well as a fantastic Data Nugget resource that was created as part of an RET (research experience for teachers) in 2020-2021. The resource is called “Love That Dirty Water” and engages students in thinking about the effect of development patterns on water quality in the Merrimack River valley of New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
Tara is currently part of a team here at Harvard Forest studying STEM identity development in middle school students who participate in schoolyard projects. Our research question has been: To what extent does a year of participation in the Harvard Forest “Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming” project influence middle school student participants’ science identities and motivation, science values, and environmental attitudes? Middle school students in 7 different schools participated in a pre and post survey collecting quantitative and qualitative data (shout out to Jenn Alsen in Lynn, Heather Behrens in Peabody, Mike Keough in Sutton, Gretchen Moorman-Smith in Ashburnham-Westminster, Scott Jaffe in Rutland, Mary Reed at St. Mary’s in Westfield, and Jane Lucia at Williston-Northampton for volunteering their classrooms as participants!).
Tara currently collects Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming data with her students at Lowell High School. When speaking about why she loves participating in Schoolyard Ecology, she says, “It’s just really cool when you take kids outside, I work with mostly juniors and senior, so 16 and 17 year-olds, this child like wonder comes out in them.” Stay tuned for initial results of our STEM identity study coming this fall!
Would you like to be featured in a future spotlight? Don’t be shy! Just fill out this form! We all love learning about each other!
Research Experience for Teachers Summer 2025
This summer, the Matthes Lab, led by Dr. Jackie Matthes, will be hosting two K-12 teachers as part of a Research Experience for Teachers program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The two Boston Public School teachers will be measuring and analyzing methane and carbon dioxide emissions from the Black Gum Swamp and upland forests as part of a large scale study measuring methane dynamics in temperate forests at the intersection of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
This year’s educators include Emily Coumbassa, a middle school science teacher at the Donald Mckay K-8 School (East Boston), and Diana Klimas, who teaches Biology at Madison Park Vocational School (Roxbury). Both new to the Schoolyard Ecology program, the two educators will use Harvard Forest data to develop new classroom-ready materials to share with K-12 classrooms this fall, which will be available freely to educators through the Data Nuggets program.
A workshop on Tuesday, August 19th will be held at Harvard Forest’s Fisher Museum for any interested educator looking to bring cutting-edge, hands-on climate data into their classroom. Register for our Summer Institute here.
~Emily Johnson, Stakeholder Engagement Coordinator
Summer Reading
Back by popular demand, we have selected another book to read in community this summer for our third annual community read. We will discuss this at our September Educator Zoom call. The winner is…. The Trees are Speaking: Dispatches From the Salmon Forest by Lynda Mapes (former Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow and author of Witness Tree). Transport yourself to the Pacific Northwest and Maine and immerse yourself in shady and fragrant old growth forests, it should be a great read—join us!
Feedback plllleeeaaasseeeee
In order to better support you all, I have a few questions about what day of the week and what time of day works best for things like in person workshops, community zoom calls, etc. I’d also like to get a sense of how many folks will be continuing with data collection next year. Please take 5 minutes to answer a few questions!
New Website
Our amazing outreach team launched a new website for Harvard Forest this spring. Be sure to check it out! Over the summer I’ll be migrating our resources from the shared google drive to the new webpage. Don’t worry, I won’t discontinue the drive until 2026, and everything that is on the drive will be available on the website and hopefully easier to find.
Schoolyard Ecology in the News
Here is a round up of news articles featuring Schoolyard Ecology from this year, consider sharing these with your community and school leadership to help them better understand the work that we are engaged in. Want to write your own press release or op-ed for your local media? See the materials here from our workshop with Director of Education and Outreach Clarisse Hart.
Did You Know? Episode 2 from the Civic Science Media Lab TV Network
TMHS Hosts Longest Running Tree Study from the Tewksbury Town Crier.
Doherty Envirothon Team Explores Harvard Forest, student journalism from Doherty High School’s Highlander’s Herald.
Other summer opportunities from our partner network (for yourself or to share with friends!)
Our friends over at the Harvard Natural History Museum regularly have great opportunities and workshops for educators-sign up for their e-news here.
Interested in more Harvard Forest events and research? Sign up for the Harvard Forest Quarterly e-news
Our friends over at the Wade Institute at Manomet Conservation Sciences have some great workshops planned for this summer, including one collaborating with yours truly aimed at introducing the study of cycles and seasons to K-5 educators. Please consider sharing this opportunity with your colleagues who work with younger grade levels.
PocketLab Heat Island Effect Study for Teachers
PocketLab and TERC, Inc. are recruiting science teachers to pilot a new curriculum unit on the Heat Island Effect using PocketLab sensors in their classrooms. The unit will study HeatViz, a portable temperature and location sensor that students can use to collect micro-temperature data in their communities, along with curriculum materials that support high school students in using these sensors to study urban heat islands and the health impacts of extreme heat. All participating teachers will receive a classroom set of PocketLab sensors and a stipend of $400.
Full details about the study can be found in the Teacher Informational Letter. If you are interested in learning more, please fill out this screening survey and a researcher will be in touch.
Schoolyard Update
Many of you have reached out to me this spring to see how Schoolyard is faring during this time when Harvard has been very publicly in the spotlight. Thank you for checking in! I’m happy to report that we are all systems go for the coming academic year. We remain committed to keeping all of our programming and support free for educators and accessible to all who want to join us in engaging students in hands on authentic science.
That being said, we are seeking new funding streams and accepting donations if you happen to have a PTO or booster club type organization in your school community who would be interested in supporting Schoolyard Ecology (and therefore your classrooms!), please consider sharing this giving campaign link with them.
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Thanks for reading until the end! Here is a video of some of the members of the beautiful gray fox family that lived under my shed this spring. There were five kits in all, here are two of them exploring one morning (pardon the sound of breakfast cooking in the background).
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