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Originally appears in the Winter 2018 issue.
Four years ago, a group of educators, community organizers, and medical and environmental professionals met around a dinner table to talk about getting involved in the education of our youth. We discussed two of the many causes for the high dropout rate: the curriculum is too often disconnected from the students’ lives and cultures; and there is a severe lacking of hands-on and community-based learning. Toward the end of our conversation, we decided we had to do something to reverse these trends. We needed to be the village in the African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” and pool our resources. Every year since that dinner meeting, we’ve worked collaboratively to create an eight-week hands-on experiential summer program and subsequent year-round internship program for high school students, based out of Rio Grande High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
The summer program curriculum is focused on water conservation, environmental restoration, sustainable agriculture, and sustainable building/planning, which students learn through hands-on community-based projects. Considering that we live on an arid, high-elevation desert, the centerpiece of our curriculum is water. Recent events across the country (and world) — from lead contamination issues in Flint, Michigan, to the indigenous-led protection of water at Standing Rock, North Dakota — helped solidify our belief that water as a curriculum topic should be front and center.
We work with students from predominantly Mexican/Chicano and Native American communities, so we try to integrate these particular cultural histories, identities, and realities as much as possible. The cultures of these students are typically absent from the science curriculum, or the curriculum of any other subject, which motivated us to adopt the group name Querencia Institute (QI). Querencia is an old Spanish word that roughly translates into ‘love of place,’ a concept that has deep cultural roots across New Mexico and the Southwest, but is an ancient concept that resonates across all cultures and communities that have spent significant time connecting with the land. We believe that by interweaving cultural perspectives into the sciences of water, land, and food, we can catalyze student interests to pursue STEM-related careers and/or academics, as well as help them to see their own cultures’ contributions to the scientific fields. This, in turn, helps promote a sense of confidence in who they are, and a sense of place, both of which are essential on so many levels.
What follows are several examples of exercises that we do with our youth during the Querencia Institute’s summer program. These have been shaped over the past four years, and are still being tweaked for improvements.
Introduction to Water and Place
For our introduction we wanted to do a group activity that would give both teachers and students the opportunity to get to know one another and begin to explore our interactions with the environment. Each student was tasked with bringing a sample of water from either their home tap or from a local water source nearby — such as a local river or community irrigation canal — and being prepared to share a personal or family story that has some connection to water with the rest of the group. After relaying to the group from where they collected the water, students shared a range of different life stories, from how their grandparents siphoned spring water into their homes, to having to hide from an angry bull by jumping inside a cattle trough all day. After telling their story, each student poured their sample of water in a clay pot placed in the middle of our circle of chairs. The idea for this opening exercise was based on an actual opening ceremony of the annual conference of local traditional farmers from across the state, the Acequia Association, which also has deep agricultural and community roots throughout New Mexico. It is important to convey to the students that the honoring and sharing of each sample of water and personal story, and the act of mixing them together, is symbolic of our summer experience where we will all be learning together.
Students were then assigned to work individually to fill out a map that covers the basic terms of the water cycle, such as ‘condensation,’ and features of a watershed, such as ‘tributary’. Throughout the summer we used a larger version of this map and added jobs, careers, and academic disciplines (hydrologist, community planner, water resources manager, etc.) related to each feature. We also invited various speakers who could talk to the students about these careers and disciplines, and about how they got to where they are. One such speaker was a wildlife firefighter, who was also a student who had graduated two years earlier from the same high school and program. It was surprising that students had no idea that there were jobs, let alone careers, dealing with water. At the end of the summer, the students took home a copy of the map containing the terms of hydrology and watershed, job/academic information, and the speakers’ contact information.
The River Walk Activity
To introduce water pollution, environmental justice, and other topics related to water, the students conducted a river walk exercise. The Rio Grande, the major river that we live by, was represented by a colored cloth on the floor, where various obstacles representing the various pollution sources were placed along the students’ walking path. These obstacles include empty gasoline cans (representing leaking underground storage tanks or oil and gas pipeline leaks) and computers (representing Intel’s computer chip manufacturing plant). The students worked as a group to carry a can of water “downstream the Rio Grande” without spilling the water. Each student held a string that was attached to the can using a large rubber band. The students had to work collectively to land the water can on each large color dot along the ‘Rio Grande’ using their respective strings. Once on the dot the students took turns to read out loud to the group about the documented cases of pollution at that particular location. Through group discussion, this exercise on local water issues revealed that most students were only vaguely familiar, if at all, with actual cases of water pollution. This is an easy activity to have students teach other fellow students, and we did it during several environmental youth conferences. This exercise is a good introduction for the students on local water quality and quantity issues, and helps set up the background for further exploration. We suggest that this exercise be followed up with one that can engage students directly into actual water pollution issues in your community.
Community Planning, Mapping, and Doing
The purpose of this exercise is to explore the concept of water conservation through community-based hands on work. We piled into a van and took the students on a tour of the watershed, starting from near the top of the mountain and traveling down to the river valley bottom. Throughout the tour, which lasted the whole day, we reiterated the various watershed terms we had learned previously. We stopped at various locations, such as homes, community centers, and outdoor classrooms that exhibited what water conservation in action looks like (and doesn’t look like), introducing concepts such as active and passive rainwater harvesting, use of drought-tolerant plants, and drought resilience. At each site the students filled out and discussed a worksheet, which allowed them to apply their new vocabulary, but also challenged them to think creatively about how the site did or did not work to conserve water, and why the site was or was not an inviting place of learning. We also provided the students with a list of water conservation terms and techniques with various graphics that would help them to identify these techniques while on tour. The tour also integrated cultural topics such as traditional techniques to conserve and manage water, as well as more modern-day practices. For example, students visited an outdoor classroom where rainfall runoff from the classroom roof was collected and stored inside a plastic tank (modern), and where the roof water was being siphoned inside unfired clay pots buried under the ground next to corn and bean plantings (traditional).
At the first few sites, staff will have to actively engage the students in the concepts and techniques, so it would be best to have an especially comprehensive site up front (or possibly a slide show if such a site is not accessible), so that the students can become familiar with looking at a site for its water conservation potential. An effective site should display several water conservation approaches, such as passive and active water harvesting, and possibly traditional and modern techniques. We felt the site tour and its evaluation process was a success, not just because students can physically interact with water conservation techniques at each site, but since they rarely travel beyond their local neighborhoods, students appreciated experiencing new places.
After the water conservation/watershed tour, the students worked in groups to design their own water conservation learning site for a community cultural center (determined ahead of time), where later we would do the hands-on implementation. Each group was given an aerial photo of the community center and a clip board, and asked to walk the site and answer these two questions: 1) How can we make the site conserve more water? and 2) How can we create a more inviting learning space for the local community? Each group was assigned an adult mentor/professional to help answer questions and help them in their brainstorming process. These adult mentors typically are teaching staff and/or local practitioners who have some community-based participatory research experience. In the future, we are going to invite local college students from the community planning department to work with these high school students during this group planning exercise as a means of fostering a peer-to-peer learning and mentoring exchange.
After walking and discussing the site and taking notes, the students went back inside the classroom to work up their final maps and get them ready for presentation. Each map was to include a title, legend, and whatever graphics they wanted (either drawn out or on sticky notes) to represent their conceptual features for the site. Each group followed a presentation structure consisting of an introduction, conceptual site plan, and conclusion. Each student in the group had to speak. After the Q/A was over for each presentation, the mentors and teachers shared their reflections on each group’s delivery and conceptual creativity, providing positive feedback and making suggestions on areas where they could improve.
This planning and mapping exercise took about two days and was the lead-in to the hands-on portion of the project, which would take an additional week. This hands-on portion involved increasing the water harvesting around the cultural community site through shaping earthen berms and basins (also known as media lunas) using small rock material. In addition, we made the site more inviting to outdoor learning activities by laying down a floor of soft crusher-fine landscape material, installing plastic storage cisterns, establishing some shade by planting trees, and planting various drought-resistant native flowers in the sunken areas of the media luna structures dug out to catch rainfall. We also incorporated artistic and functional wildlife structures such as a bee sanctuary (a native bee nesting structure), which the students constructed out of wood and adobe. These hands-on projects require several knowledgeable adults to help guide student work, and possibly the use of heavy machinery. Because these projects were already designed by various landscape architects and environmental restoration practitioners, neither students nor teaching staff needed to worry about securing project supplies nor materials. If the student-generated ideas can add a new application to the existing design we try to incorporate them, too.
The purpose of this activity was not only to create an outdoor learning space for a cultural center; it was also for students to appreciate the collaborative planning process and its many challenges and gratifications. We wanted the students to take on roles of responsibility, such as having to come up with their own unique designs for the outdoor learning space, and also to help create a positive change in their communities that they could oversee from beginning to end. Many students expressed pride and a sense of accomplishment after this project was completed, and it also was a great lesson on working collaboratively.
Water and Culture
This exercise explored the cultural connections between water and humanity, through a text-image matching game. Students randomly chose pieces of paper from a hat, each containing paragraphs describing one of 12 images, sketches, or videos placed around the classroom. In previous classroom sessions, we had gone over basic hydrology terms such as ‘aqueduct’ and ‘flood control,’ but the students needed reminding of the definitions. After addressing any questions they had about the text, they went around the room in small groups or individuals examining each media/image. Having the students matching the text to specific images was a means of making learning fun, while engaging the students’ reading and observation skills. After all the matches were made correctly, which took about 20 minutes, we went around the room and had each student stand by the image/video they had picked and read out loud the text they had pulled out of the hat.
Throughout these readings, staff injected additional information to give the students more background on the amazing levels of knowledge, ingenuity, and creativity that went into constructing the various structures. Reading out loud was sometimes cumbersome as there would inevitably be some students who had trouble reading, and thus lacked confidence in reading to their peers. When adopting this exercise consider reducing (from 12) the number of images the students have to match, depending on your class size, student interest, and reading capabilities. In our experience, student attention started waning by the sixth image, especially if some students had trouble reading. A good follow-up is to put up a poster-sized world map that the students could use to mark the location and utility of each structure by reusing the images already on the wall. This larger map could be left on the wall and referred back to throughout the term.
The visual media and matching text, collected and synthesized by staff from various anthropological and other academic sources, describes several civilizations around the world, past and present, and a variety of truly astounding ways that water has been collected, preserved, and shared. See the references section below for the major key resources used in this exercise. All text is based on actual facts, but was often edited to reduce the academic jargon and make it easier for a high school reader to comprehend. Examples of the images on the walls include cross-sectional diagrams of rainwater harvesting cisterns carved out of limestone beneath ancient homes and places of worship built during the Mayan civilization in Central America, or tunnels and conduits carved out of rock that carried water underground from village to village, often miles away, in the arid regions of the Middle East.
From this exercise students were able to appreciate how water management has a long and amazing history across the various cultures; and how managing water is a trait that is common throughout all of humanity. Another important lesson we try to have the students reach on their own during the post-exercise discussion is the fact that civilizations developed in water-scarce regions of the world often created some of the most ingenious ways to conserve, share, and honor this precious substance. It is important that staff follow up this exercise with some group reflection and discussion about what students think are some of the lessons that can be drawn from the long relationship humanity has with water. One important lesson is that water management was always a community affair, and so a true healthy watershed also means bringing back community dialogue and cohesion.
Take Home Experiences
The Querencia Institute was born out of the need to help improve the education of our youth, and was created and sustained by bringing together dedicated teachers and community members. Hopefully this project can inspire you to reach out into your ‘village’ and see what creative people and unique ways you come up with to support local youth, whether it be during the summer, after school, on campus, or beyond. Seek out those professionals who are already working with youth, in both traditional and non-traditional settings. These professionals are people of any profession, such as restoration ecologist, community organizer, creative academic, musician, artist, plumber, construction worker, etc. We believe that exposing students to healthy hands-on learning is severely lacking from most high schools, especially in disenfranchised communities, and is one of the root reasons why students (understandably) get bored and drop out of school. While the topic of water might not be your forte, we believe it has tremendous potential to help unify and organize any subject lesson plan. Whether you live in a wet or dry (or changing) environment, there will be issues related to water that inevitably intersect all sorts of topics, ranging from STEM disciplines, social justice, history, and sustainability. We hope some of these exercises have inspired a similar approach in your particular school, community, and organization, and go on to create new waves wherever student learning is taking place.
Maceo Martinet is an ecologist and educator in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He works on various environmental restoration, water conservation, and community-based education projects throughout the state.
