Mount Si and Snoqualmie Elementary students team up to restore creek bank

Published 8:30 am Friday, June 10, 2016

As part of a collaboration with Snoqualmie Elementary School, Mount Si High School biology and environmental science students walked over to the Kimball Creek Slough on June 2 to lead the removal of invasive species along the creek’s edge and to give lessons based on their classes to fifth grade students.

In addition to cleaning up invasive plant species on the creek bank, Mount Si students developed lesson plans to teach the fifth grade students they worked with. Andrew Rapin, biology teacher at Mount Si High School, and Shannon Wenmen, environmental science teacher, said the lessons had been a great way to get the fifth grade students to get interested in environmental science outside of the classroom.

“The students were given topics and their job was to develop a lesson that was 15 minutes long around that topic. They all tie into ecology and wetlands and why they are important and conservation,” he said. “It’s been really a great way for the high school kids to mentor the younger students and hopefully then the younger students will take the classes and they will be paying it forward when they are high school students.”

The student lessons covered elk ecology, soil structure and function, macroinvertebrates, human impacts on the environment, sustainability, climate change and its impact on wetlands, ecology of birds and alternative energy.

Students from both schools alternated between the outdoor lessons and cleaning up the creek bank throughout the morning. The students were removing invasive species like Himalayan blackberries, which do not have deep roots to stabilize riverbanks. After the site is cleaned up, Mount Si students are developing and implementing a restoration plan to put in native species.

“They are removing the invasive species the Himalayan blackberries, there’s also some English ivy and there are hops that I don’t know how they got in here,” Rapin said.

“They are removing the roots and the blackberries and the AP Biology students are developing a restoration plan to be able to replant and try to put in native species so we will be collecting from the willow and Sitka spruce and then they are going to maintain the site, that’s the hardest part.”

The removal is easy but maintenance of the site is the goal for the future, Rapin said. Mount Si students have been taking before and after pictures of the site in order to monitor the area and learn from it.

The two schools collaborated because the project site was very close to both, Rapin said. It saves both time and money spent traveling as the location is just across the street from the high school.

“It is such a great opportunity because it’s in our backyard,” he said. “It applies with their learning in the classroom, it’s experiential and we don’t have to cover the cost of transportation. If there are some challenges where (students) can’t miss a certain class, they can just jump in and take that and come back and teach their station.”