Birding Buddy Beginnings

Over the course of the last few months, the graduate assistants at the Leahy Institute for the Environment have been hard at work, creating intentional, curricular-aligned, and fun educational experiences that utilize our “wild” areas in our Outdoor and Living classrooms. Recently, we were given the opportunity to put these plans into action, thanks to I4E’s Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning, Professor Katy Farber. Through a collaboration with Middle Grades Collaborative, Saint Michael’s College hosted an on-campus institute for middle grades teachers from around Vermont to attend workshops and gain more resources to enhance their teaching. Professor Farber helps facilitate this collaboration so we were fortunate enough to work with the MGI teachers. 

On the first day, the workshop we offered was called Birding Basics. During this experience, we signed out the iPads, grabbed our binoculars and marched over to the Natural Area and put our birding skills to the test. Although it was in the midst of a heat wave, six willing teachers powered through the muggy, sunny weather and joined us at the teaching pavilion in the Natural Area. Here, we picked up our birding kits, which include the iPads (equipped with an application called Merlin), binoculars, and clipboards with a map of the Natural Area and a challenge birding checklist! As luck would have it, many of the teachers that joined us are science teachers that were looking for ideas to make their teaching more immersive and field-friendly. We all had a wonderful time diving deeper into Merlin and the Natural Area, in the hopes of identifying as many birds as possible. Did you know that you can find birds in the Natural Area that you can’t find on campus?! 

The teachers had fabulous ideas about how to link the birding experience to their curriculum. One physical science teacher wanted to look more closely at graphing the audio files of the bird songs, while a special educator was impressed by how meditative and meaningful the activity felt. Everyone’s minds were spinning with creative ways to use the technology and the beautiful space! I came to the realization that I (Hayley) was far too excited to hear the teacher’s thoughts to successfully bird — it’s definitely a quieter activity! Thankfully the others were more successful and we had fun returning to the pavilion to reflect on the activity and analyze our bird songs.

Overall, it was an exciting beginning to bringing more birders to the Natural Area, as well as using our Institute resources to connect with our host-community K-12 schools and leverage our approach to place-based, project-based, environmental education and stewardship. If you’d like to try your hand at birding and bring a class over to the natural area, don’t hesitate to fill out a request for a birding kit or an iPad! 

Edits & Contributions from the Leahy Graduate Assistant Team