Reflection by TB

I feel very fortunate to have had the experience of attending the 2013 Fire Education Institute held at The Nature Place in Florissant, Colorado in June.  I originally was just on the wait list and found out one week before that I would be able to attend.  The timing of the institute was surreal because I live within 5 miles of the recent devastating Black Forest Fire in Colorado Springs.  I knew that this was an area that I did not know very much about fire education and safety, and that I would be learning a lot.  I work for The Home School Academy in Academy School District 20, and our program has three days of enrichment classes held on Black Forest property.  While I am not currently teaching at the forest property, my teammates are, and I knew that they would love to learn and implement directly the lessons that I learned firsthand in the class. 

                  After arriving at the property, I was excited to see all of the materials that we would be receiving.  I checked in and met the other participates in the class.  We then had a wonderful evening meal.  I have to say, I was incredibly impressed with all of the meals that we received during the class!  I’m sure that other people will be raving about the food in their reflection paper as well!

                  On Monday, we spent the day learning from different guest speakers.  Dave Rudd from the Colorado State Forest division talked about pine beetles.  I did not know that there were different types of beetles that affected different types of trees. We watched a power point on forest diversity and beetle damage.  Next Amy Sylvester from the Colorado Springs Fire Department talked about the history of fires in Colorado Springs.  She gave advice on fire mitigation and told us that she would be available as a guest speaker for any groups.  This is good to know seeing as she is local to me, and that we have students directly affected by the Black Forest fire.  We also had Dr. Peter Brown talk about dendrochronology.  We talked about the different parts of the tree, spring/summer wood, false rings, and other information about dating trees.  I learned that only conifers produce rings, not tropical trees.

On Tuesday, we spent a full day visiting various wildfire sites and learning about flood mitigation locations and techniques.  I learned a lot from Theresa Springer with CUSP.  I really thought that there really wasn’t must more damage that was going to be had from the Waldo Canyon fire.  I mean, what was burned is already done, so the rest of the houses are going to be fine.  When she said that with 100 percent certainty that Manitou Springs would flood this summer, and that many homes and businesses were going to be destroyed, I was shocked.  I was also shocked to hear about how much damage highway 24 would have in the case of a major flood.  When we saw the sandbags around people’s houses, and the 3-d map of the steep terrain that would be flowing water down into Ute Pass, it really opened my eyes.  Of course, when all of her predictions came true in our most recent heavy rains, I certainly was not surprised.  This guest speaker made the most impact on me and because of her, I designed my lesson plan to focus on flooding after a fire occurrence.  We took a hike up to Blodgett Open Space, which was affected in the Waldo Canyon fire and tested soil for the presence of hydrophobic soils and saw how they are attempting flood mitigation after a fire.  We also went by Glen Eyrie and saw the most amazing structures that they have placed in the canyon above their property.  I was shocked by their immense size and that such a small creek has the potential for such huge flooding. Later after dinner we learned about the COWRAP program. 

On Wednesday we learned about the organization structure that occurs during a large fire.  I saw some of this first had as we watched newscasts live during the Black Forest fire.  Also, I drove by the high school where the staging was held for this fire.  After seeing the sea of tents covering the parking lot, I can see how a lot of organization must take place.  We then took a nature walk around the property and learned a little of species diversity, fire mitigation, overstay, and ground cover.  After this, I unfortunately had to leave for the majority of the day to attend a funeral. 

On Thursday we had another field trip day where we met with Mike Hessler from the St. George fire department.  We saw the aftermath of the Springer fire and did a forest scavenger hunt.  This activity would be good to do with our students on the Black forest fire site.  I thought that the stream restoration site was a great example of helping the area be able to return to a new “normal”.   This evening we watched a movie “The Two Sides of Fire”.  While the movie was good, I don’t think I got much out of it because I was tired.  I guess that there is so much to learn though, and only so many hours in the day.

Finally on Friday, we finished up the course and talked about what lesson plans that we were planning on creating.  I actually changed my lesson after the flooding in Manitou, but would be interested in seeing other people’s final projects. 

Thank you for offering this course and providing so many resources and materials.  Teachers rarely ever get such quality materials and programming.  I am going to recommend this class to all my friends in the future.