From the Classroom

Field Trip to the San Pablo Baylands

Field Trip to the San Pablo Baylands

When preparing for their field trip out to the San Pablo Baylands, teachers Kirsten Franklin and Eric Norstad posed this question to their students: How can we, as fourth graders, learn about the importance of the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge and help the Sonoma Land Trust share this information with the public in the form of a Public Service Announcement?

The San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge is a project years in the making; an acreage that has been given new life with it’s liberation from dry farmland to vital wetlands. In the mid 1980s, the Sonoma Land Trust acquired its first property in the Baylands along Highway 37. They then initiated the lengthy process of restoring the land to its natural state as tidal wetlands. This began by breaching a levee, which along with many others built in the 1880s destroyed the wetlands of the bay area to provide agricultural land for the growing city and population.

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What is a Watershed Classroom Teacher?

What is a Watershed Classroom Teacher?

A Watershed Classroom teacher is supported with funds, field trips, materials, and resources, as they incorporate the local environment into their curriculum and classroom. 

When Eric Backman, Principal at Casa Grande and board member of Friends of the Petaluma River, first envisioned the program he very much wanted it to be teacher driven. Teachers know their strengths and what they do best; they know how they best build curriculum, modify it and adjust to fit their current students; and they know how to best facilitate a rich learning environment. 

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McNear Bioblitz

McNear Bioblitz

Last Monday morning, students in Kirsten Franklin and Eric Norstad's third grade classes at McNear Elementary arrived at school excited for a day of outdoor exploration and discovery. As part of a planned restoration and habitat creation project on the McNear campus, they spent the day conducting a Bioblitz, recording species that they encountered along Thompson Creek and behind their classroom. 

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The Watershed Classroom Gets Oriented!

The Watershed Classroom Gets Oriented!

The Watershed Classroom is about supporting teachers implementing exceptional Petaluma Watershed curriculum. What this means is we at Friends of the Petaluma River spend a lot of time speaking with teachers, training teachers, coordinating with teachers… Don’t get us wrong, we love teachers! Our guiding principle is that educators are our community's most valuable resource.

Yet we realized that there was one piece missing from our side of the Watershed Classroom experience: STUDENTS! Though we sometimes get to work with students during field trips or at our end of the year Student Showcase, many participants in the Watershed Classroom had not even heard of the program. We decided it was time for a change.

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