A garden model setup in Rebecca Morris’s classroom at La Center Highschool June 13.
Rebecca Morris, a teacher from La Center High School, gives The Reflector a tour of the garden she works on with students June 13.
La Center High School Teacher Rebecca Morris earned the Green Apple Award for a school employee at the 2019 Green Awards ceremony last spring. Morris and the La Center High School Environmental Action Team achieved platinum status with Washington Green Schools.
“(It’s) pretty cool,” Morris said. “There’s some teachers I know that are doing really neat things in other districts and it’s neat to be recognized for the work that a lot of us do that is different.”
The Green Environment Awards were launched in 1994 to recognize those in communities that make a positive impact on the environment.
“The intent of the Green Awards is to shine a spotlight on individuals and organizations that are achieving positive environmental results and giving back to the community,” Sarah Keirns, environmental outreach specialist at Clark County Public Health said in a press release. The Green Apple Award is one of six Green Awards and is given to an educator that inspires students to learn about the environment and practice sustainability.
Morris grew up on a farm in Clark County where her family grew or hunted most of the food they ate. She has been teaching for 28 years and has been in the La Center School District for 21 of those. For the past 11 years, she has taught Environmental Studies (originally called Project Study).
Morris’ environmental studies class has three primary strands: gardening and land use, water monitoring and watersheds and waste reduction.
Morris got the idea for her three hour environmental studies class 11 years ago in a discussion she had with the La Center superintendent.
“I spoke to the superintendent about us phasing out the alternative high school because I thought we could offer some alternatives in a different way,” she said. “I went to him with the idea of a three-hour class that does english, history and science.”
The class began to gain traction and eventually became part of the Clark County Water Monitoring Network the following fall. After that, Fish First, a Northwest-based salmon recovery effort contacted Morris hoping to get a salmon egg box and the class evolved into the environmental studies class it is today.
The gardening portion of her three-hour environmental studies class features a student-created garden at La Center High School, rainwater harvesting and land management.
“All of the money that has been spent on the garden has been student raised through primarily grants,” Morris said. “We grow produce and perennial herbs that we then give to the school cafeteria. The rest, we do a couple of donations to the Clark County Food Bank.”
For the water monitoring portion of Morris’ class, her class heads out to the wetlands three times a month to learn about water quality testing and watershed activities. Following the first excursion to the wetlands, the high school class creates lessons and activities to teach a class of fifth graders the next time they head to the wetlands.
“We go outside one to four days a week and we’re off campus a minimum of one day a week and we walk down to the wetland,” Morris said.
“All students go down and do water quality testing. Half the kids are doing water quality testing and the other half are doing macroinvertebrate identification or vegetation assessments,” she continued. “They’re smaller groups so more people can be engaged in learning.”
According to Morris, having high school students teach the younger ones while out in the wetland is a great unconventional way of quizzing them on the subject of water testing.
Students in the water testing program also report the data found to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife to prove that the wetlands are a viable salmon habitat. The class then gets 2,000 salmon eggs and works towards a salmon restoration project. According to Morris, the class and their fifth graders have seen some of the salmon come back to the habitat to spawn.
Morris also mentioned her love for water and how the education of water and salmon habitats is important to her.
“I love water. I like to be in it, I like to be near it, I like to hear it. I know that we would not have such a beautiful area that we have in the Pacific Northwest and especially in Southwest Washington if we don’t take care of it,” Morris said. “I know how warm the East Fork of the Lewis River is and how it’s incredibly negatively impacting salmon populations band when those are gone, we can have as many hatcheries as we want but they’ll never come back the same. We have to start taking some positive actions.”
Morris feels that education of the habitats at a younger age will teach students how to handle the rapid population growth of the region in a conscientious matter.
The final portion of Morris’ class is waste reduction in which the class learns about what can and cannot be recycled, how garbage is sorted and how to recycle more responsibly at the high school.
Morris plans to teach environmental studies for years to come.
“I come out of every year learning more and I’m inspired to continue learning more because I enjoy watching kids when they start making the connections (in the classroom),” she said.
