Positive framing

River Center Oyster Reef Ecology Program

This program for students in grades 3-8 is focused on the role of oysters in the Loxahatchee River. Students learn about animals that depend on oyster reefs for habitat and community efforts to rebuild reefs.

At the end of the program, educators describe two successful habitat restoration projects -- a small pilot project and a large-scale project. Near the end of this video (see 24:30 to the end), the educators and partners show and describe what can be accomplished through collective efforts. Below, we summarize this part of the program (either watch the video or read the description below to learn more about the example).

This section of the video describes a multi-agency reef restoration and monitoring project.  First, with the help of volunteers, the organization restored oyster habitat beneath residential docks using bagged oyster shells. Volunteers helped collect and bag the oysters and attach them to the docks. After observing animals making homes in the reefs, they expanded the project, placing rocks and shells along the bottom of the river to create even more habitat.

One speaker emphasized that having a thriving oyster reef ecosystem, such as the one they helped restore, creates a ripple effect that impacts the entire food chain, from microscopic organisms to fish that people like to catch and eat.

The speaker conveyed encouragement to program participants, saying: “You can be a part of big things. As you move through your career, maintain relationships. Keep connections because there’s times when collectively you want to work together to accomplish something big.”

In closing, the educator said, “The environment is not a destination, it’s where people live. Humans can have a positive or negative impact on the environment. It is up to us, we can choose.” Before ending the program, the educator prompted students to think of ways they could have a positive impact on their environment today.

By sharing these two examples of projects that improved the ecosystem, the educators helped students really understand how positive changes happen and the ways that different community members participate in those changes.

Gaston County Soil Stewardship

In this program for middle and high school students in Gaston County, North Carolina, students learn about soil stewardship through videos and complete a field investigation prior to a synchronous discussion with the educator.

In this pre-module video, Soil Ecosystem Services and How to Protect Them, (view from 6:34 - 8:17), an educator and a farmer discuss how soil stewardship and farming can help sequester carbon and combat climate change.

Here are a few key ideas from that video clip:

The educator asks the farmer whether soil stewardship practices could help sequester carbon.

He replies: “Higher carbon concentrations increase the ability of plants to fix carbon. So as carbon concentrations go up, plants can actually absorb carbon quicker and move it down into the soil faster. Now as to whether that can be done on a scale to combat climate change.. Yes, over a long time horizon, and that’s how the carbon got out of the atmosphere to begin with. Plants pulled it out over time and it got buried into the soil. So that same process will happen again, it’s just a matter of time scales… Right now, we’re emitting as a world a lot more carbon than we might be sequestering as farmers.”