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 Kids enjoying the CLEAN Program

Shane Hulsey CLEAN Environmental Education Program

CLEAN (Children Linking with the Environment Across the Nation) is an innovative program offering students hands-on environmental education activities while safely participating in a canoe trip or stream walk in the Cahaba River watershed. The Cahaba River Society has compiled an interdisciplinary field and classroom curriculum tailored to local water resources to encourage critical thinking among students to help them make informed decisions about water resource issues.

CLEAN is based on the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's environmental science education program, which has a 30-year track record of proven educational value. With the support of Toyota Motor Corporation and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Cahaba River Society established the CLEAN partnership in 1996, one of only 3 organizations in the nation chosen to receive startup funds and intensive training in this model educational approach.

To date we have served over 18,500 students and teachers in Jefferson, Shelby, St. Clair, Bibb, Perry and Dallas County.

Kids enjoying the CLEAN program.

 

CLEAN aims to build a constituency of students, teachers and their families who value a healthy river and empower them to protect and restore our natural resources. The program increases awareness of the social, cultural, and economic impact of environmental decisions and communicates the importance of restoring and protecting water resources and increasing stewardship as a part of urban and rural revitalization and growth.

The CLEAN program serves public, private and home schools and church youth groups in the Cahaba watershed and Birmingham Water Works Board's drinking water service area through delivery of field trips, restoration projects, and teacher training.

FIELD TRIPS

Although there are many individual providers, there is no system-wide approach to environmental education in Alabama's schools. Hands-on, outdoor environmental education has proven to be an effective vehicle for engaging students and improving their knowledge and decision-making skills.

The CLEAN Program teaches the concepts of the schoolyard and backyard as part of the watershed by providing activities such as seining for fish, water quality testing and macroinvertebrate surveys. Middle school and high school youth receive more advanced training in these concepts by participating in a canoe trip on the Cahaba River. All field trips emphasize safe canoeing while discovering the relationship between humans and our impacts on water quality, habitat, aquatic life, and wildlife. Students explore the impacts of urban and rural land use on the water resource, identify choices, and discuss their individual roles to become stewards of the watershed.

RESTORATION

Environmental Education is generally defined to include environmental knowledge from natural and social sciences, calls for developing awareness of concerns about environmental issues and includes an action dimension. The student is provided with knowledge and encouraged to do something. Too often the do something component is not well defined. In addition to providing restoration opportunities, the Cahaba River Society offers training workshops designed to help teachers lead students toward a particular action to resolve environmental issues - providing the tools with which responsible decisions can be made.

All students and teachers involved in the CLEAN program are encouraged to undertake community waterway restoration projects such as storm drain stenciling and streambank re-vegetation. We have formed a special relationship with county officials and school administrators throughout the watershed, to help them develop on-site service projects and outdoor environmental classrooms. We are focusing on restoration of local waterways and strengthening the concept of a schoolyard as a watershed learning tool. Many area schools are adjacent to or within walking distance of water resources that can be used as outdoor classrooms.

We encourage the creation of student environmental service clubs at the middle and high school level, to spearhead site development and involve the community in activities.

TEACHER TRAINING

The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future reported that many science teachers do not have adequate preparation for the classroom. Thirty seven percent of science teachers do not have a major in science. For schools with a higher percent of minority students - the numbers are worse - fifty percent of science teachers do not have a major in the field (What Matters Most: Teaching For Americas Future, 15-16).

By offering further educational opportunities to science teachers, the Cahaba River Society helps to prepare them for teaching environmental science and ecology concerns in order to motivate students to seek further environmental science in high school and take part in shaping environmental policies.

 Children enjoying the CLEAN program.

Field workshops are a wet run for showing teachers how to conduct a student field trip. We take them through field trip activities, discuss logistics, and communicate the curriculum. Curriculum workshops convey the full scope of the learning sequence and train teachers to use the curriculum guide to accompany indoor and outdoor student activities. Week-long teacher trips provide canoeing safety, curriculum training, field workshops for backyard streams, information about creating outdoor environmental classrooms, ideas for development of student restoration projects and environmental service clubs.

CLEAN Environmental Education Program

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