Project Description: Students were able to attend the River City Water Festival at the
Grand Rapids Public Museum. They created posters about ways to protect
the local watershed, and submitted them to the Festival.
Fostering Lifelong Stewardship: Students have connected their knowledge of watersheds and how to
care for them to Social Studies content.
Teachers: 5
Students: 180
Funder: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency through the Michigan
Department of Environmental Quality
Project Description: Our project engaged students in studying the benefits of native
plants to our watershed and within suburban/urban locations. Students
designed, planted, and maintained a bat garden that will attract
insects to help sustain bat populations. Students built bat houses to
hang and monitor bat populations. Students planted native plants to
attract butterflies. Each year students release monarch butterflies,
so we expanded the area for milkweed plantings as well. Students also
participated in the removal of invasive species around our outdoor
classroom, the Outback.
Fostering Lifelong Stewardship: Students learned more about the importance of native plants, how
to help our watershed, the benefits of bats to seed dispersal and
insect control, and the need to help restore ecosystems. The students
will be better prepared to educate others about how to protect our watershed.
Partners: River City Wild Ones
Teachers: 4
Students: 115
Funder: Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative, GVSU College of Education
Project Description: Students researched components of the Grand River Rapids
Restoration project, designed and created shadow puppets and puppet
show scripts, and educated younger students about the Grand River’s
impacts on our community. They also designed and created rain garden
landscape plans for a local business; these designs were transformed
into felt art pieces.
Fostering Lifelong Stewardship: Students have a better understanding of their human impacts on
place, and as a result, they will be able to make more informed
decisions about their actions and hopefully recognize the long-term
consequences of short-term decisions.
Project Description: Our classes worked together to learn more about recycling and our
impact on the world. We took two field trips, one to the Recycling
Center and the other to John Ball Zoo. We used additional funds to
purchase products to help with our school’s recycling program.
Fostering Lifelong Stewardship: Students learned more about how to reduce their waste in an
effort to help our planet, and its animals, be healthy. They learned
what goes into exhibit design to help animals at the zoo have a good
living environment. Place-based learning helped our students see that
they have an impact, either negative or positive, and through our
experiences, they were able to choose the more positive impact by
being better informed and having more resources to help them persuade
others to have a positive impact.
Partners: Kent County Recycling and Education Center, John Ball Zoo
