Reflection by SM

I really appreciated the opportunity to attend the Fire Ecology Institute this year.  I am an eighth grade social studies teacher who also serves as a language arts teacher.  The social studies curriculum includes civics and the project based learning activity that is a highlight of civics is the mock trial.  For the last ten years this trial has focused on a DUI situation.  Over the past few years I have been interested in changing the focus to wild fires as it has become more and more applicable to the day-to-day lives of those of us living in Colorado.  I saw this Institute as an opportunity to give me both background information as well as hand-on experience that would help me make the Wild Fire Mock Trial a real learning experience for my students.  I’ll be working with both the science and social studies teachers on this project in the upcoming year and will share what I learned at the Institute with them both.

  A number of learning activities during the Institute were amazingly helpful.  Amy Sylvester gave a great description of what fire professionals do in wildfire situations; I took notes that I will share as writing prompts in my language arts class.  The movie, Fire Wars, was a very powerful learning tool for me that I will turn into a teaching and learning tool in my classroom.  The students this year will be getting applicable fire ecology lessons in both science and language arts. 

The field day experience was eye opening for me.  Actually seeing the burn areas up close, as well as examining the areas gave me the opportunity to add a real-world learning experience to what I will be covering in class.  The information on fire mitigation will be included in research work that I will have the students do.  The aspects of flooding because of wild fires are going to be a project-based activity that the science teacher and I will be developing.  The question for the students will be around ways to help these areas prior to flooding.

     Our students also are required to do a community-based service project each year and my teaching team is discussing how we can add fire mitigation to the options.  The Fire Adapted Communities and wildfire protection plans discussions will be a powerful way to introduce this community service option. 

  The take-away materials were really impressive.  I’ve got materials for my classroom, information for helping me build my mock trial, items to share with my science teacher and numerous on line and real-life resources to help me teach this topic.

Finally, I made a number of connections with other teachers that I know I will utilize in the future.  The Institute allowed me to meet and work with people from different curricular areas, different districts and individuals who are in the classroom per se, but will be great contacts in the future.  If I could attend this institute again, I would.  I plan to watch for future Project Learning Tree opportunities in the coming school years.