Science in the Schoolyard with Janneke Petersen
Excited to share the 60th episode of The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast! Join the conversation with science curriculum developer Janneke Petersen shares how she empowers students with Symbiotic Schoolyard. This curriculum helps teachers plant and grow native plants in their schoolyard. This place-based learning initiative is aligned to Next-Gen Science Standards and helps students understand how ecology is local and meaningful in students' everyday lives.
Links
Symbiotic School Yard website
Youth Ecology Education through Restoration (YEER) mentioned in episode
Homegrown National Park: Doug Tallamy’s website
Nippon.com story about Miyawaki forests in urban areas-mentioned in podcast
Transcript
Scott Lee: Greetings friends and colleagues, welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast the professional educator’s thought partner-a service of Oncourse Education Solutions and our partner SEL Resource. I am Scott Lee. In today’s episode I’ll share a conversation with Janneke Petersen, creator of Symbiotic Schoolyard, a program supporting science teachers in planting a pollinator garden or native planting project in their schoolyard as a part of a high-quality, 8-week ecosystem curriculum aligned to Next Gen Science Standards. Using the curriculum students take on the role of restoration ecologists to answer the question: How can we increase the biodiversity of our schoolyard? Through hands-on lessons both in the classroom and outdoors, students learn that native plant communities form the foundation of complex food webs. Students develop and implement a plan for planting native plants in part of their schoolyard that has low biodiversity.
Welcome, Janneke, to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast.
Janneke Petersen: Thank you, Scott. I am very glad to be here.
Scott Lee: So, could you share with us a little bit about, what your role is currently and then tell us a little bit about the problem that you were running into when you were a full time teacher?
Janneke Petersen: Absolutely. I wear two hats. And my first hat is my Symbiotic Schoolyard hat.
And Symbiotic Schoolyard is, a curriculum designed for middle school science teachers that involves planting native plants in their schoolyard. In a way that is completely integrated with a high-quality science standards aligned curriculum, and I do that work through my website. I'm trying to get, the word out to teachers and I provide teachers with the curriculum and I provide them with one-on-one support and implementing the curriculum and the planting project.
So that's one hat. My other hat is my nonprofit hat. And, that's for a program that I've developed with my partner organization. The program is called a YEER or Youth Ecology Education through Restoration. And my partner organization is the Washington Native Plant Society. We are working with eight schools now around the state of Washington to support these schools and planting native plants in their schoolyard, using the curriculum, The symbiotic schoolyard curriculum.
And so we bring in community partners. We coordinate the planting project. We provide training to the teachers, and we are expanding. So, we just got our first state grant and we're looking to work with more schools across the state. Symbiotic schoolyard is my attempt. To get this curriculum and get this program model into the hands of more teachers across the United States, and Canada and, and the world, because, with my non-profit work, we're just focused on Washington State, and I really think this curriculum and this program model is really exciting, and I want to spark a nationwide movement of teachers restoring biodiversity to their schoolyard with their students as a part of a high-quality curriculum.
Scott Lee: Let's talk a little bit more about, what the Symbiotic Schoolyard does. Because, lots of schools have a school garden, of some sort? Sometimes it's to grow food, sometimes to do other things. So what does a symbiotic schoolyard do, that's different from just a service learning project, say, to plant a garden?
Janneke Petersen: Yeah, that's a really good question. When I was a teacher. I, was a middle school science teacher in Seattle, and I came out of grad school and I had all these ideas about, tackling climate change and biodiversity loss and all these big environmental problems.
And, I came out of grad school with these ambitious ideas about project based learning and, my classroom just being a launch pad for taking my students out into the community. And I got into the classroom and I very quickly realized that being that kind of teacher is really hard.
There are many obstacles. To doing really exciting project based learning and, taking on environmental problems in your community. There are many barriers, but one of the barriers, is a lack of high-quality curriculum to support that kind of teaching.
There's plenty of curriculum out there that sort of has, uses all the buzzwords like PBL. Solve stormwater runoff, polluted stormwater runoff in your community, solve climate change. And what I found is that typically those projects, were not very ambitious. It was like, have your students make a poster.
And I wanted to go way beyond making posters with my students. I wanted to take them seriously as change makers. I was teaching an earth science class and I was not comfortable. Teaching them about all the problems, climate change, biodiversity loss, polluted stormwater runoff, without also empowering them to be a part of creative solutions.
And so, I realized there was this real lack of high-quality curriculum. that supports that kind of teaching science curriculum specifically. As I was kind of realizing this and starting to wonder if I could create this curriculum myself, I discovered native plants. And, I read Doug Tallamy's book, Nature's Best Hope, which I highly recommend.
Doug Tallamy's book was all about how the relationship between native plant communities, insect populations, bird populations, and ecosystem health. And basically, if we want to support biodiversity in our communities, we have to plant native plants, protect native plants, because that native plants support complex food webs.
And so, back to, being that classroom teacher, there was an area of my schoolyard that was overgrown with an invasive species here on the West coast called English ivy. And I had to walk by it every day on my way to my classroom. And I thought, man, what if I could remove that invasive weed with my students and plant native plants?
And I knew I could do that. Like there are organizations that can help teachers do that, and I could like organize a service learning day at the end of the school year. And we could like spend a couple of days removing invasives and planting native plants, and that sounded great, but I was like, man, there is like a much greater window of opportunity here, what if that project, that hands on the land physical project? What if that project could be the anchor to my ecosystem unit? And what if I could completely integrate that work with national science standards and a rigorous, ambitious science curriculum? And, that was the seed of an idea that, set me on this journey of creating this curriculum because there's there's absolutely an exciting, wonderful movement right now in our country to plant native plants in schoolyards, whether you call it pollinator garden or Miyawaki forest.
It's a wonderful movement, but what is often missing is integration with curriculum. It turns out that planting native plants in your schoolyard. It's all in the standards.
Like you look at the ecosystem standards, then NGSS standards for middle school, Doug Tallamy's ideas are all in there. It's all about biodiversity, human impact, food webs. So if we can tie these planting projects into those standards, that suddenly just makes such a rich project based learning experience.
Scott Lee: Yeah. You mentioned, English ivy, here in the Southeast. It also is an invasive species. and, one that we finally got rid of it, I think, in our own yard, here at home. So
Janneke Petersen: congratulations.
Scott Lee: Well, thank you. Hopefully it won't come back.
Janneke Petersen: Yeah, did you plant native plants in its place?
Scott Lee: Yes. We've been trying to do that, for a long time, actually in the backyard. Unfortunately, there's an overgrown area kind of right next to us. And it keeps wanting to come over the, up over that wall always having to fight it back every summer.
So, yeah
Janneke Petersen: So ambitious plant for sure.
Scott Lee: Yeah. Between that and, and kudzu we've, we're always fighting invasive plants here. I think you talked about why it was important to plant native or do you want to talk about that some more?
Janneke Petersen: So, for anyone listening, I'll just say, if you really want to learn about this, I do highly recommend Nature's Best Hope by Doug Tallamy, but essentially, when we plant native plants, we're supporting local food webs. So, when you have, an invasive plant like English ivy or kudzu or Himalayan blackberry, there are certainly pollinators and birds and animals that feed on that plant. But if we want to support biodiversity, all kinds of pollinators and birds, then we have to plant a variety of native plants because native plants have co-evolved with animals in their place.
And so, you have many examples for, like, the classic one is of butterflies that have co-evolved with specific plants, like everybody knows monarchs and milkweed, so monarch caterpillars can eat the leaves of milkweed, and that's one of the few plants that they can eat. And so, they depend on milkweed for their reproduction and survival.
And it turns out that actually a lot of pollinators have host plants and depend on certain plants that they have co evolved with, in a specific place. So, if we want to support pollinators, we have to. Plant their native plants. And then if you bring back pollinators, that insects, that creates a food source for birds since birds, a large portion of their diet is caterpillars and insects, and seeds of native plants and nectar.
And then if you bring back insects and birds, it just supports the whole food web going up. The food chain. If we want to bring biodiversity to our yards or our schoolyards, we want to plant a variety of native plants.
Scott Lee: How seriously, do you think, teachers need to, take their roles regarding biodiversity or, or why is biodiversity a crisis and what should the role of educators be, regarding, improving biodiversity?
Janneke Petersen: Yeah, that's a great question. So, we are in a sixth mass extinction event right now.
We think in the geologic history of earth, there have been about five mass extinctions. This is the first extinction. Caused by one species: humans. I have some numbers here, but, 22 percent of all known mammals are under threat, 30 percent of amphibians, 70 percent of plants are under threat.
So, we're seeing biodiversity decline, everywhere on planet Earth. Because of human impact. And so, why should teachers care? Why should teachers be a part of this? Well, schoolyards are often maintained as biological deserts, for many reasons, it's easier to sort of, have a lawn, then have a thriving ecosystem, or that's sort of at least the narrative that a lot of, schools have, and for reasons of control, you can see out over a lawn. So, so school yards are often maintained as biological deserts, but the schoolyard is typically not taken seriously as a learning space, and so while there might be some attention paid to the inside of the building, often the outdoor spaces are ignored as learning spaces. And this isn't the case for all schoolyards, but very commonly schoolyards are maintained as biological deserts, just lawn, pavement, or, just sort of forgotten, weedy, invasive species.
So why should teachers care? Well, we, we have to teach students about the problems that we face, whether that's climate change or biodiversity loss, or all the other problems. And we have to teach that, those are in the standards, it's all in the standards.
Climate change is in the standards, biodiversity, and teachers have to teach to the Next Generation Science Standards. Which is a wonderful set of standards, it's really depressing to teach these topics without also empowering students to make change. And what better place to make change than in your own schoolyard?
And so the schoolyard, most schoolyards just have so much potential for change. Increasing biodiversity. And so students can learn, they learn about the biodiversity crisis and then they get to actually be a part of a creative solution right outside of their door in their schoolyard, and they learn hands on the land skills of Native plants and how to plant, they learn the names of native plants in their bio region.
Most students, you never learn that. I went through K 12 public education in California, and not once did I learn the name of a plant or an animal outside my classroom window. So, it's this opportunity. It's this exciting opportunity, not just to empower students to be like change makers and be a part of a creative, solution to the biodiversity crisis, even if you don't, Don't feel moved by the biodiversity crisis, or if you're not interested in native plants as a teacher, even if those things aren't like what, gets you going, it's just a wonderful opportunity to do project based learning, and hands on learning, and getting kids outside.
And so, it's this, almost low hanging fruit, I see it. To take kids into the schoolyard and the projects that, that teachers can do, it can be small. You can work with five by five feet, you can work with a little tiny area of your parking lot and plant native plants there.
It doesn't have to be this huge project.
Scott Lee: Yeah. So, my next question is what should a teacher do if all they have is a parking lot outside?
Janneke Petersen: Okay, so Symbiotic Schoolyard Curriculum works with, I would say, probably any schoolyard in the United States can do Symbiotic Schoolyard, even if you are 100 percent pavement.
So you can plant native plants in containers, called native container gardening. You can plant, native pollinator seeds and you can have beautiful, flower pots, and you can plant native shrubs and containers, there's all sorts of like creative, containers or reuse, old rowboats and plant, Plants in them like you can get really creative.
But this works with any type of schoolyard. Like if you have lawn in your schoolyard, you can do a lawn transformation, where you remove the lawn and plant native plants are really exciting because Lawns are biological deserts. They require a lot of water and a lot of pesticides, typically, so you can get rid of lawn and you can restore native plants in that area.
Lawns can be a little more difficult to persuade principals and school districts of, because sometimes those lawns are used, but if you can find, like, a little corner of the lawn that is not used by the sports teams, and just turn a little corner of the lawn, that can work.
But pavement works for container gardening. You don't need to rip out the pavement. If there's a little abandoned weedy corner of your parking lot, that's just overgrown with invasive species that will work. For your restoration site. There is a space in every schoolyard I think to do this.
Scott Lee: You've mentioned place based learning and sometimes there's obstacles involved with that. Sometimes it's convincing the principal, or whoever. And a lot of times, Place based learning can be kind of daunting simply because there's a lot of unknowns, what's going to happen?
Is this really going to work? What are some obstacles, that teachers have faced from either colleagues or administrators and how did they overcome those obstacles, in order to implement Symbiotic Schoolyard?
Janneke Petersen: Yeah, the biggest obstacle that I personally experienced as a middle school science teacher to doing place based learning, and this was just in my, context, the biggest challenge I faced was a lack of high quality curriculum cause I was all about place based learning. I had to teach an ecosystem unit, as do all life science teachers, middle school science teachers in our country.
Every middle school student in our country does an ecosystem unit. The, which lasts, between four and eight weeks. All of the published ecosystem units are based on ecosystems halfway around the world. So, the most widely used one in the Seattle area for middle school is an ecosystem unit based in the Costa Rican jungle.
And I, it was so frustrating to me. I was like, I don't want to, my students learn about an ecosystem in Costa Rica. Like we live in it. There's an ecosystem right outside the window here. Can't we learn about this ecosystem? And so, my biggest barrier, my biggest obstacle was I couldn't find high quality place based curriculum.
I searched high and low and I couldn't find a place based ecosystem. Unit. And so that was my that was my biggest challenge. And Symbiotic Schoolyard was my solution. And so Symbiotic Schoolyard is a place based, standards aligned ecosystem unit, and I worked really hard to make it work. It's kind of strange, but it's a place based unit that works anywhere in the country or the world.
And the way that works is through a sort of plug and play that works really well. So, there's a set of ecosystem cards that teachers make for their bio-region, that I have a template for in instructions, so that was my biggest barrier, as a teacher. And my hope is Symbiotic Schoolyard has removed that barrier for other teachers.
In terms of barriers, like specifically for a native plant project. So when teachers are wanting to plant a pollinator garden or Miyawaki forest or whatever flavor of native plant restoration, they want to do in the schoolyard. There are a lot of barriers to that. I would say, it really depends on how supportive your administrative staff is, and some teachers, they're really supportive principal, and they just get it, and they're like, absolutely, do this, and other teachers have to, like, make a full effort argument, for why it's valuable. I think finding a space that doesn't have another use, if you're like, we want to plant your pollinator garden in the middle of the football field, your principal's probably not going to give you permission, so what I would recommend to teachers is, walk around your schoolyard with your principal.
Also invite maintenance staff. And have your principal and your maintenance staff include them from the beginning. You might have to make the argument to them about why this is a really valuable thing to do. And that, that argument can include, it's project based learning, we're improving our schoolyard, we're creating a healthy outdoor space for students.
Scott Lee: So, tell us a little bit about, feedback you've heard from teachers that have implemented this.
Janneke Petersen: Yeah, so I had one teacher, here in Washington and she's been teaching for 25 years, and she told me that this curriculum and project has been the highlight of her 25 year teaching career, which was pretty amazing to hear.
I've gotten other feedback from teachers this curriculum has been piloted by 12 teachers in Washington state, and it's been through three years of iterative design now, and it's really improved since the first year because the 12 teachers have been, this lesson didn't quite work.
Here's what I changed. I've incorporated all of their feedback. And the feedback I got this year is that the curriculum was really engaging, each lesson really tied back to the driving question for the unit, which is how can we increase the biodiversity of our schoolyard? And, the teacher said it was very cohesive.
But the teachers have been saying that they love how hands on it is, not just the outdoor portions. but the indoor portions are very student centered and hands on, I had one teacher who said it's the best unit they do all year, they like to start with it in the fall because it just gets science off to a really exciting start.
All the teachers say that the students, keep on like asking them, when are we going to go outside again and check on our plants? And, and they even have students coming. Now that we're in our third year, some of these, sixth graders who did this are in ninth grade. And they're coming back to their teachers and asking if they can see their restoration site, so it's definitely a pretty different memorable experience for students to actually get to change their school yard and be part of something real.
Scott Lee: So do you have, any other stories, from, from students, , to share about the experience?
Janneke Petersen: Hmm. So many like little, just little stories like kids are so earnest when they're talking to you. I get the privilege, especially with the nonprofit work I do of getting to actually be part of these planting days with students. And so, I have had so many wonderful conversations with kids. planting plants together. I had one girl who just looked at me incredulously and was like, “wait, you can get paid?”.
You can study this in college. Like “you can study restoration ecology in college and like get paid to do this work?”. She was like, and then she was like, “I'm, I'm going to become a restoration ecologist”. She said that, which of course, you know, makes me very happy. There was a boy, a few weeks ago who I was planting with, and I got the sense that in the classroom, he had some behavioral issues and wasn't used to being perceived as a good student. And he just really loved planting trees. And he and I just planted tons of trees together and he just became super focused and was asking all these questions about how he could do this in the future and how he wanted to do it more plant more trees and yeah, so yeah, lots of little stories like that.
Scott Lee: Thank you, so much for joining us today Janneke on the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast once again, the curriculum is called Symbiotic Schoolyard and there is a link to it on our website. We appreciate you being with us and, and having the opportunity to share this with teachers.
Janneke Petersen: Yeah. My pleasure, Scott. It was really, really fun to chat with you.
Scott Lee: The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is brought to you as a service of Oncourse Education Solutions. If you would like to learn more about how we partner with schools and youth organizations strengthening learning cultures and developing more resilient youth, please visit our website at w w w dot oncoursesolutions dot net.
This has been episode 3 of the 2024 season. If you enjoy this podcast, please tell your friends and colleagues about us, in person and on social media. Also, five-star reviews on your podcast app helps others find us. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is a production of Oncourse Education Solutions LLC, Scott Lee producer, in partnership with Chattanooga Podcast Studios. Guests were not compensated for appearance, nor did guests pay to appear. Episode notes, links and transcripts are available at our website w w w dot thoughtfulteacherpodcast dot com. Theme music is composed and performed by Audio Coffee. Please follow me on social media, my handle on Instagram and Twitter is @drrscottlee and on Mastodon @drrscottlee@universedon.com
