Heading Up-river...Downstream/Upstream and its associated curriculum model to be presented at Minnesota Association of Environmental Education Conference, June 21, 2012

I will present "Art, Story, and Infrastructure: A Model for Experiential Interconnection in Environmental Education" at the 2012 Minnesota Association for Environmental Education Conference: Rec-reate, Re-create, at Itasca State Park, June 21-22, 2012.

The conference promises to be as interesting as in years past with its great variety of formal and informal environmental educators, practitioners, policy makers, and researchers. I'm particularly pleased to be presenting Downstream/Upstream at the headwaters of the Mississippi which is a central part of the project.

Session Abstract
It has been said we need “a new story” of the earth and our place in it to move toward sustainability. The concept of interdependence is fundamental to sustainability, but hard to comprehend in a culture still designed around individual independence. This session presents an exploratory demonstration project and curriculum framework designed for experiential interconnection of children with their human and natural community. The framework centers on revealing interconnecting water infrastructure specific to a child’s experience. The approach is place-based and interdisciplinary --incorporating participatory public art and transformative journey design to make environmental content more personally meaningful. The demonstration project, Downstream/Upstream, took early childhood and Kindergarten classes on a two-week journey from their school through their urban water cycle, tracing a path of their sink-water from the Mississippi River, along upstream infrastructure to the faucet. The next week they traveled from their drain, along downstream infrastructure, arriving by boat to the outflow channel where their sink-water returns to the river. Children engaged with the journey through science, art, photography, music, movement, mosaics, water meter measurement, story-telling, utility representatives, and service projects. Preliminary results from pre/post-tests, observations, and feedback indicate the project was associated with increased awareness of nature-infrastructure interconnections, and increased sense of competency, curiosity, and identification as a water steward. The companion Pre-K/K-12/post-secondary curriculum framework, which outlines core elements and suggests adaptations by age group, will be downloadable at time of presentation. Format: slide presentation, video, participatory activities. Target audience: All-age school and program leaders .

Water Journey Outline

Well, the two-week Downstream/Upstream Learning unit was a whirlwind! Here’s an outline of what happened. More detailed descriptions will follow in the weeks to come, with some of the documentation using photographs taken by the students themselves. Now that the focused learning unit is done, the project continues at a slower pace with the student's water journey story books, a site installation marking the entry and exit of water systems to the school, and an exploration of plantings and rain gardens to address natural site water flows.

Downstream/Upstream Two-Week Learning Module Outline

Week 1: Upstream Week

Day 1: Tuesday, May 31

• Chart the Upstream course at the Big Map
• Introduction to Cameras
•  Learning the Water Journey Song
• Decorating Water Collection Bottles

Day2: Wednesday, June 1

• What is water: Water cycle
• What is water: Water activities and experiments

Day3: Thursday, June 2

• Tour of River Park (storm water demonstration park)
• At the River: Upstream Water collection
• Nature Hike River Park's features
• Tour of St.Paul Water Intake with Jim Bode, St. Paul Regional Water Services
• Tour of Sucker Lake and picnic lunch
• Tour of Water Treatment Plant

Little Canada Water Tower, by Amelia, Pre-K

Day 4: Friday, June 3

• Tour of Water Tower
• Follow water lines to building
• Exploring the Water Meter
• At the Sink: Upstream Water Release
• Making Treasure Maps of Water Journey

Week 2: Downstream Week

Day 5: Monday, June 6                                                         

• Water Taste Test: tap water and bottled water
• Tracing the Mississippi

Paul, Pre-K, peers below the classroom floor at pipes

Day 6: Tuesday, June 7

• Chart the downstream course at the big map
• At the sink: Downstream water collection from tap
• Follow pipes under the ground, out the building
• Manhole sewer demonstration with Bill Dircks, City of Little Canada
• Water meter measurement of toilet flush and hand wash
• Making dirty water

Day 7: Wednesday, June 8

Downstream Water Release

• Metropolitan Waste Water Treatment Plant Visit
• Water Cleaning Game and singing
• Jonathon Padelford boat tour downstream to where cleaned water effluent channel returns to the Mississippi,with Brian Goodspeed, Park Ranger
• At the river: Downstream water release
• Further downstream: Heron Rookery and other downstream communities
• Singing on the River 

 Day 8: Thursday, June 9

Ella, Pre-K, Gail Buhl and Maxime, Raptor Center

• Meeting some Downstream Residents: Raptor Program with Gail Buhl, Raptor Center
• Picture with an Eagle

Day 9: Friday, June 10

• Water in the World: Other country’s water systems
• Downstream/Upstream Concert, with Beth Wiskus
• Begin working on story of water books… to be continued

Kids, Cameras, Stories!

One of the activities in the Downstream/Upstream project is to get kids to retell the story of their water journey using their own words and pictures. Each child will create a water story book of their explorations and trips on the learning module in parks, at manholes, on the river boat ride... The idea is to use kid-friendly cameras, story prompting, and drawing/coloring to draw out what each child found interesting at each location.

In addition to each child’s book, a map-based community book, from the whole classroom will be created. The beginning of this book, called Downstream/Upstream Mapstories, was presented at the Living Green Expo Art Exhibit May 7-8. As illustrated below, the community book is a wall map made of “tiles.” Each tile is an area of the city, whose cover can be lifted up to reveal more about that place. A few starting images were shown at the Art Exhibit to give the idea, but once the project is complete, the children’s images will create thicker books beneath the path of their water journey. In addition to recording stories, the wall map will be used to chart the journey and share it with the parents and other classes.

Depending on funding, the cameras from this project will become part of a nature appreciation class kit for a nature center or similar program.

Downstream/Upstream Receives Institute on the Environment Mini Grant

February 28, 2011 - University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment Awarded a Mini Grant to gather an interdisciplinary team to develop a curriculum model based on the Downstream/Upstream demonstration project.

Excerpt from the Mini Grant proposal for
"Art, Story, and Infrastructure: A Model for Experiential Interconnection
in Environmental Education"

This Mini Grant Proposal will support a new interdisciplinary research project called “Art, Story, and Infrastructure: A Model for Experiential Interconnection in Environmental Education.” The focus on cultural sustainability in the 2010 edition of State of the World and the Institute on the Environment’s cross disciplinary efforts such as “River Life”, and “Dialogue Earth,” among many other trends, underscore the importance of integrating the tools of cultural development such as art and storytelling with scientific development toward effective sustainable outcomes and effective outreach of environmental information to broad audiences. The conveniences of infrastructure have allowed individual actions, such as water use choices, to be experientially disconnected from impacts to natural systems. However, by paying attention to infrastructure and integrating it into our concepts of the world, we can counter its invisibility and better appreciate its contributions while also better understanding the implications of its over-use. This proposal will gather an interdisciplinary team of University faculty and outside partners around the topic of how to use place-based interaction with infrastructure, interpreted through art, story, and science to create an experiential and informed sense of interconnection of our daily use of resources with the engineering and natural systems in which they interact. The Mini Grant scope lays the essential groundwork needed to develop a replicable curriculum model based on a concurrent research process and demonstration project. The work of the Mini Grant will be available for use and further development by the environmental education community, schools, and other researchers.

More Detail on Curriculum Model Grant