If You Give a Kid an Oyster: Reflections on Collaborations in Place-based STEM Education Through Oyster Restoration Science in New York City

Many urban New Yorkers believe that the Hudson River is so polluted that nothing could possibly live there. In reality, the estuary is thriving, and The River Project (TRP), a marine science field station in lower Manhattan, exists to showcase its vast biodiversity through place-based education. In 2014, TRP began collaborating on a city-wide initiative with the Billion Oyster Project and nine other partner organizations to integrate restoration science into Title I middle school curricula through the Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS). Teachers in the fellowship program attend science workshops and professional development opportunities to bring the locally relevant topic of oyster restoration into their classrooms. Through this partnership, TRP has expanded its reach beyond the typical 90-minute field trip experience, fostering relationships with teachers through professional development workshops and in-classroom lessons to support their students’ project-based learning explorations. This confluence of educational activities created a richer, more meaningful learning experience for teachers, students, and TRP educators. INTRODUCTION Dispelling the Dead River Myth. It is a widely held belief among residents of New York City that the Hudson River is a “dead river,” spoiled by hundreds of years of urban pollution. Perhaps for this reason, waterways surrounding the island city are historically underutilized for educational purposes. In reality, the Hudson River and New York Harbor are experiencing an ecological revival, with a multitude of native species returning to and proliferating in its waters (Stanne, 2015). Species such as the striped bass, lined seahorse, and blue crab abound in the Hudson River Estuary, much to the surprise and delight of New Yorkers unfamiliar with the thriving ecosystem in their aquatic backyard. Murky, green waters do little to dispel negative perceptions of the Hudson that linger from the days when the river was a repository for everything from chemical to human waste. Although the color, caused by billions of tiny photosynthetic plankton, represents a productive ecosystem (Stanne, 2007), many people associate the green color with toxicity. The cloudiness of the water, a combination of suspended plankton and silt, obscures views of the charismatic fauna beneath the Hudson’s surface. It was the predicament of the Hudson’s inaccessibility that gave rise to The River Project 32 years ago. At its inception, The River Project (TRP) operated the only flowthrough aquarium in New York City, pumping unfiltered water from the Hudson River Estuary to nourish a variety of native species housed in its tanks. Today, the marine science field station, located on a pier in Lower Manhattan, still remains somewhat of an anomaly. While many environmental education programs have been established in the years since its founding, few allow students and the public the same level of intimate interaction with the Hudson River and its inhabitants as TRP’s Wetlab, a 4,000-gallon flow-through aquarium system. Connecting New Yorkers to Their River. The Wetlab, originally conceived as a hub of estuarine science research, quickly expanded into an educational center to fill a void in place-based environmental education in New York City. Since 1995, The River Project has hosted field trips for over If You Give a Kid an Oyster Caref Vol. 1, No. 2, April 2018 Journal of STEM Outreach 25 20,000 students. During field trips, students from pre-kindergarten through college are introduced to urban ecology, field science, and the river’s often-elusive inhabitants (Figure 1). Classes learn science through fieldwork, such as measuring water quality and checking traps, which highlight relationships between the abiotic and biotic elements of the ecosystem. All field trips are designed to align with grade level, as well as state and federal science standards. Teachers are offered a variety of topics and skills that can be covered during the trips, to better complement class work. The place-based education that The River Project provides is particularly necessary in New York City, where many people are highly disconnected from the local environment. Many local schoolchildren learn about the importance of coral reefs and tropical rainforests, but few can define the term “estuary”, despite the fact that NYC developed into the major city it is in part because of its location at the intersection of ocean and river. Orienting students to their geography and local ecosystem, and their role in this ecosystem, helps them “become more conscious” and increases student “accountability outward” towards their local environment (Gruenewald, 2003). In post-trip surveys, students repeatedly express increased interest in their local environment after attending field trips at The River Project, as well as a desire to become stewards of the New York Harbor ecosystem. Understanding the importance of their local ecosystem and how it is a part of “nature” helps forge personal connections to it, which in turn instills a sense of agency, following the adage, “to know is to care is to act.” Enabling students to view wildlife in the context of its actual ecosystem shows students the importance of preserving this habitat and gives them a stake in protecting it. Partnerships in Place-based Education. While The River Project has demonstrated success in utilizing place-based education to connect students to their local estuarine environment and to foster stewardship, one of the greatest shortcomings of its current programming is that it lacks opportunities for long-term student engagement. The majority of classes attend field trips at TRP as a one-time experience. Although most teachers try to incorporate the field trip into their curriculum, many lack the content knowledge, administrative support, curriculum materials, and/or field equipment to take full advantage of the learning opportunities that exist on NYC’s waterfront. An opportunity to increase long-term student and teacher engagement arose in 2014, when TRP partnered with nine local organizations as part of an NSF-funded project to integrate place-based restoration science into Title I middle school curricula. The Curriculum and Community Enterprise for Restoration Science (CCERS) uses oyster restoration as the focal point for a teaching fellowship program with a two-year stipend that trains NYC public school teachers in hands-on STEM education. Teachers in the fellowship attend regular professional development (PD) workshops to support their in-school and in-field teaching and have access to relevant lesson plans. Each teaching fellow receives an Oyster Research Station, a cage of live oysters that also serves as a temporary trap for mobile organisms and settlement surface for sessile organisms (Figure 2). These cages are deployed throughout New York Harbor at sites where they are relatively close to fellows’ schools and easily accessible to teachers and students. Students follow protocols to collect data about the oysters’ growth and mortality, the mobile and sessile organisms they observe, various water quality parameters, and local site conditions. Classes upload their data to a shared database called the Digital Platform (see Supplementary Materials), so that other students and researchers can access the data in almost real time. The CCERS program is organized into five programmatic pillars under the administration of principal investigators and senior personnel from the Billion Oyster Project, Pace University School of Education, Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York Academy of Sciences, and the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science. The River Project is one of ten partner organizations that comprise the programmatic pillars of the enterprise: teacher training, student learning, Digital Platform application, after school mentoring, and marine science research (Figure 3). As part of the fifth pillar of CCERS, marine research, TRP provides a vital public space and dedicated staff for teacher trainings and field trips for students. There is no comparable site in NYC at which teachers and students can learn about the estuarine ecosystem first-hand and gain proficiency in urban field science methods. TRP has provided oyster restoration-themed field trips Figure 1. CCERS students offer ideas during their field trip’s opening talk at The River Project, May 2016 If You Give a Kid an Oyster Caref Vol. 1, No. 2, April 2018 Journal of STEM Outreach 26 Figure 2. An Oyster Research Station covered in sediment and estuarine organisms. Photo courtesy of Heather Flanagan, 2016 for over 1,600 students of teachers in the fellowship. However, the impact of these field trips has been magnified manyfold by the scaffolding provided by CCERS. Through this partnership, TRP has been able to engage with the same cohorts of students and teachers for over two years through field trips, in-classroom lessons, professional development workshops, and research symposia. This long-term, multipronged program enables TRP’s mission to educate the public about the vitality of the Hudson River Estuary to impact students in a meaningful and lasting way. TRP also continues to serves as a resource for teachers after they have completed the fellowship. EDUCATIONAL STRATEGIES Restoration Ecology Supports Place-Based Education. The CCERS program uses oyster restoration as a vehicle for integrating experiential place-based education into K-12 STEM curriculum. This program enhances student connection to their local community by “emphasizing hands-on, real-world learning experiences…[which] increases academic achievement, helps students develop stronger ties to their community, enhances students’ appreciation for the natural world, and creates a heightened commitment to serve as active, contributing citizens” (Sobel, 2005). Furthermore, this project specifica