PORT ANGELES — If you can’t bring students to a classroom, you figure out how to take the classroom to students.
Educators at the Feiro Marine Life Center are coming up with a home delivery model for its outreach and enrichment programs, particularly its signature Peabody Creek watershed project that teaches fourth-grade students from Port Townsend to Joyce about the effects of urban living on waterways.
Rachele Brown, Feiro’s education manager, said that taking instruction online was a way to make the most of closed schools during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re trying to adapt the best we can to kids not being in a classroom or able to take their classes out in the field,” she said.
Rachele Brown, education manager for Feiro Marine Life Center, looks over a model of an urban landscape that she uses as part of her Peabody Creek watershed education project that would normally be presented in school classrooms. With schools closed at least through April, Brown was putting the presentation on video for teachers to use for online education. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
On Tuesday, Brown and Feiro Facilities Director Tamara Galvin were creating a video to demonstrate how urban pollution contaminates watersheds.
Using a model of an urban landscape and a spray bottle of water to simulate rainfall, Brown explained how creeks and waterways can carry pollutants into harbors and oceans.
It was the same basic presentation Brown would give in schools before taking students on a field trip to Peabody Creek, which flows from Olympic National Park through Port Angeles and into Port Angeles Harbor.
“This is the part we take to their classrooms before we take them outside,” Brown said. “So now we’re taking it to their living rooms.”
With mounting concerns about the spread of COVID-19, Gov. Jay Inslee mandated the closure of all K-12 schools in the state through at least April 24 with the possibility that the closures could be extended.
The mandate included a directive that schools do whatever they could to educate children remotely whenever possible.
Feiro’s online presence is adding to the arsenal of tools available to teachers, Brown said.
Feiro Marine Life Center Facilities Director Tamara Galvin takes a break from creating online videos of the center’s programs. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
The center has been offering videos of exhibits and creatures, and it has offered an online story time available only to students through their schools. Included is a plan to create a visual touch tank using comparisons between sea creatures and the feel of common household items.
Brown said she hoped the video of the Peabody Creek watershed presentation would save precious remaining classroom time when and if school resumes later this month.
“By being able to give them the video as a pre-recording, I won’t have to go through all 20 classroom visits beforehand in that month or so of school we might have left,” she said. “I can just take students out into the field.”
Galvin said Feiro employees and volunteers will continue to keep the education stream going the best they can. Four weeks of online programming already is scheduled.
“We’re sort of brainstorming in case (school closures) go longer,” Galvin said. “We’re hoping for the best and planning for the worst.”
