Exemplars from Community Works Institute

Applying Knowledge Through the CO-SEED Program

by Mary Spaulding

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The eighteen fourth graders’ excitement keeps them from noticing the chilly November air while exploring the lichen encrusted gravestones at Hinsdale, New Hampshire’s Hooker Cemetery. These students are eagerly gathering information for a nature guide to the cemetery they are creating with the help of Johanna Liskowsky-Doak. As a Project Assistant for CO-SEED, Johanna spends time each week working with these students before she heads back to Antioch New England Graduate School for her afternoon class. The students are not just creating a nature guide for their own benefit, community members will also benefit from their project. Plans for a kiosk to house the guides, along with a quest are underway, but in the mean time, students are having fun exploring the outdoors while providing a service to their community.

Johnanna is one of a group of Antioch graduate student Project Assistants who are a part of the work-study program at Antioch New England Graduate School. As a part of the collaboration between Antioch and the Antioch New England Institute (ANEI), Johanna Lisowsky-Doak, Rob Feigal-Stickles and I work together both in classes as graduate students, and as CO-SEED Project Assistants at Hinsdale Public Schools. We are completing our second year of coursework in Environmental Studies where we focus on different aspects of environmental education. Rob is enrolled in the Teacher Certification program and is preparing to student teach in a High School Biology class this coming spring, while Johanna and I are studying Environmental Education. As students, our coursework covers a variety of topics, including curriculum development, ecology concepts, and reading the forested landscape. As Project Assistants we take this knowledge and apply it to our work with different teachers and students at Hinsdale Elementary, Middle and High Schools, all who are a part of the CO-SEED site.

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Although Johanna has worked as a special education teacher and environmental educator for several years, she has noticed that, “I have changed the way I phrase my questions for the fourth-graders. My questions are much more inquiry-based now.” Johanna’s graduate studies at Antioch have changed her approach to teaching. Classes such as Curriculum Design, Ecology of the New England Landscape, and Inquiry-Based Teaching have taught Johanna natural history information of the region, and given her teaching tools. Johanna loves working with the fourth-graders on this project. “Kids love the cemetery; there has never been any negativity towards it, and they are always eager to go back,” she reflected.

Rob Feigal-Stickles’ graduate studies are preparing him for a career in teaching biology at the high school level. Working with CO-SEED has helped give him new insight into teaching and the inner-workings of a public school system. As a Project Assistant, Rob attends teacher team meetings at the Hinsdale Middle and High Schools where he collaborates with teachers to help with their curriculum development. After four semesters of studying all aspects of science education and analyzing the challenges many schools and teachers face, Rob gets a taste for such situations when he visits Hinsdale Middle School. A challenge Rob will soon experience as a classroom teacher, is that planning time is limited, yet extremely important for teachers. Rob worked with teachers to compile voting information for an election unit. He is currently working with Kristen Donaldson and Chris Brown, ninth grade Earth Science and Math teachers at the High School, to develop curriculum for analyzing the data from a weather station that sits atop their school. “Working with teachers helps me put the theory I’m learning in graduate school into practice,” says Rob of his experiences at Hinsdale. Having taken Curriculum Design at Antioch, Rob now tries to focus on relevant themes when assisting in the preparation of lessons. He sees that the “canned lessons” he once used as a seasonal environmental educator do not work in every setting.

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In addition to his work with the middle and high schools at Hinsdale, Rob is also collaborating with Johanna’s group of fourth-graders to help them develop a nature guide to the cemetery. As a requirement for his Geographic Information Systems (GIS) class at Antioch, Rob will use Hinsdale as the site for his final mapping project. The fourth-graders need a map of the area and Rob will use his GIS coursework to develop it.

I have also had the opportunity to apply my coursework in Environmental Education at Hinsdale Elementary School. The Environmental Studies Department at Antioch requires that its Environmental Education students fulfill 800 hours of practicum experience. My work as a CO-SEED Project Assistant is part of this required hands-on learning that takes place in the work environment. I am working with Irene Hall’s sixth-grade class to start a lunchroom waste composting program. As an avid composter I see this as a great opportunity to share my knowledge and act as a guide for the students towards reaching their goal. As an educator who loves hands-on teaching, I am learning how to step back and serve as a guide while students conduct research to learn about composting. After doing so, they will present their findings to each other, interview key members of their school community, and develop a plan for composting at their school.

We are encouraged to incorporate our graduate coursework into our roles as Project Assistants here at ANEI. If there is a class project that we can apply to our CO-SEED work, our Project Director Polly Chandler encourages it. I have integrated both my Grant Writing class and my Curriculum Development class into my work with Hinsdale. The research for a grant for Hinsdale’s compost project and the writing of a curriculum that I can actually pilot while serving as a CO-SEED Project Assistant brings relevance not only to my coursework, but it encourages me to dive deeper into my work as a Project Assistant.

Our time as Project Assistants at ANEI is limited, as Rob, Johanna, and myself will graduate from Antioch in May 2005. As we return to the workforce as educators, we will carry with us the ideas and learning experiences we have obtained while working as Co-SEED Project Assistants. Johanna hopes to find a job working with students to implement place-based and service-learning projects. As a High-School Biology teacher, Rob will develop curriculum for service-learning science projects in his classroom. I hope to continue to work with students and schools to green up their school grounds with gardens and compost bins. We will all bring with us the lessons and energy we have found rooted in CO-SEED Hinsdale and ANEI.

CO-SEED (Community-based School Environmental Education) is a program of Antioch New England Institute (ANEI). ANEI is the nonprofit consulting and community outreach organization of Antioch New England Graduate School

The CO-SEED Program at Hinsdale is made possible by a grant from MRPSOC, Monadnock Region Public Schools of Choice. The MRPSOC grant program is funded by the United States Department of Education’s Voluntary Public School Choice Program, established under the No Child Left Behind Act.