What does stewardship look like?

At Mountain School, we try to teach our students how to be stewards of the earth. When we visit the students at their school a few weeks after they came to Mountain School, we try to get them to make connections between the environment out here in the mountains and the environments closer to their home and their school. At some of these post-trip visits the students participate in stewardship activities at parks near their school. We wrote about this on our Chattermarks Blog back in 2011 when we first began facilitating these stewardship events.

Here are some shots from the Sunnyland Elementary stewardship event at Memorial park in Bellingham. The students, their teachers, and Institute staff removed blackberry, mulched and planted red-osier dogwood and Sitka spruce. They also got VERY muddy!

Here are the shots from Geneva Elementary's stewardship event at Euclid park, also in Bellingham. There, students, teachers, and Institute staff got rid of a TON of ivy and planted some spruce and dogwood.

Leading photo: Students from Geneva Elementary, gathered around the tree they just planted. All photos provided by Jeff Anderson


Ryan Weisberg is a graduate student in North Cascades Institute and Western Washington University's M.Ed. program. Ryan grew up here in Washington, exploring the natural areas around Bellingham and in the Cascades. Ryan is the Chattermarks editor this year during their residency at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center. Check out Ryan's other writing at: http://chattermarks.ncascades.org/author/ryan-weisberg/

Mountain School Stewardship

by Julie Stone.

Hello friends of Mountain School! If you haven’t yet heard, we’ve started a new Mountain School Stewardship program in Bellingham. After a class has come to Mountain School, we meet them at a city park within walking distance of their school to do a service project. The students revisit what they learned at the Environmental Learning Center, explore the nature in their backyard, and learn about their role as stewards of the forest. So far, we’ve had trips with Whatcom Hills Waldorf and Lowell, both with great fall weather, a lot of hard work and lots of fun. Here is an update from our latest trip with Lowell.

First and foremost, I want to thank our grads, Kiira, Susan, Matt and Ashley for coming. They did an amazing job organizing the kids, keeping track of their groups, doling out little educational tidbits, and keeping the kids motivated while pulling blackberries and mulching. I think they deserve the “making blackberry removal fun” merit badge. Its a skill. Plus, they’re just plain cool. Thanks again you guys! We’ve also been working with Rae, the Volunteer Coordinator with Bellingham Parks and Recreation. She has invaluable tips of the trade, like how to doggy-dig mulch into a bucket and how to drive a pickup filled with blackberry vines with the equipment for 35 volunteers stacked on top. She’s amazing. Join us next time for when she saves the world!

Matt works with students to figure out which blackberries to tackle next. 

Rae's truck loaded up after our workday.

Our first class arrived on a frosty morning at Lowell Park after a cold walk from their school. I start out by getting the kids talking about Mountain School and reminding them what a plant needs to survive. We played an invasive plant game that I aptly named “Invasive Invasion.” Its nearly impossible to say, I spent the whole day trying. The game emphasized the lessons the kids learned about what plants need (air, sun, water and soil), while letting them run around like crazy people. I introduced the idea of stewardship and our role in the fight to keep our native plants alive, which they accepted with the gusto only children can muster for clipping blackberries. Ah, the magic of youth…

Rae split the kids up into work groups and we tackled the huge patch of blackberries in front of us. The groups worked together to clear around native plants that had been planted in previous years. Each graduate student had their own work group and area to work in. We had two overlapping classes, with about 60 kids throughout the day. All those hands made for light work while we cleared over 200 square feet of blackberry. Both classes had a great time, happy to be outside and see their Mountain School instructors. At the end of the day, we were all proud of the amount of progress we had made. Way to go Lowell!

 Lowell park before all of our work.

 The park after all of our work!

Thanks again for supporting Mountain School and all of our programs at the North Cascades Institute. Look for us in a park near you!

This article is cross-posted on the Chattermarks Blog.