Fall Reflections from Golden Gate
Editor's note: Guest blogger Drew Gallant is a Multi-Campus Environmental Science Educator at NatureBridge. He is currently based at our Golden Gate campus.
The fall season has been full of sunshiny days, beautiful sunsets and soaring hawks here at NatureBridge Golden Gate. When I think about what I’m most grateful for, I reflect on having the world's best classroom—the national parks. Although I am currently based at our Golden Gate campus, I’ve had the opportunity to teach at and/or visit all of our beautiful campuses throughout the country this year. The NatureBridge community is full of brilliant and welcoming individuals, and I am so thankful for their joint efforts to ensure all students and participants feel a sense of belonging within our programs and the national parks!
When reflecting on my year full of NatureBridge experiences, my most recent week teaching students from Sutterville Elementary School in Sacramento comes to mind.
The week started off with exploring our connection that all of us share the same watershed, the San Francisco Bay Watershed! At the Golden Gate campus we are fortunate to be teaching right in the mouth of the watershed and able to engage in hands-on learning at an array of locations. Students explored the Point Bonita Lighthouse where they participated in community science by monitoring the number of Pacific Harbor Seals hauled out on the rocky shores of Bonita Cove. A juvenile Red Tailed Hawk surprised us while we were hiking back from the lighthouse, which provided a perfect teaching moment for us to learn about hawk migration and how they rely on the Marin Headlands on their annual trip down to warmer regions.
The NatureBridge community is full of brilliant and welcoming individuals, and I am so thankful for their joint efforts to ensure all students and participants feel a sense of belonging within our programs and the national parks!Drew Gallant, Multi-Campus Environmental Science Educator
The following day, the group engaged in creating their own watershed model by using the sand on Rodeo Beach. This was an especially important and beautiful moment, as it was some students' first time ever seeing the Pacific Ocean and exploring on the beach! We took the learning even further by visiting the Intertidal Lab on campus, which features marine critters that have learned to adapt to a constantly changing environment. The students then got to explore the pond, which was full of macroinvertebrates, and learned how these creatures are key indicator species of a healthy ecosystem. It’s amazing how much exploration and learning can be done in just a few days, and I always tell the students that this park will always be welcoming for them to return on their own and share with their home communities!
Although the fall season is winding down, I am looking forward to seeing new and familiar school groups returning to NatureBridge Golden Gate in the spring. I am also excited to be here to watch the heavy winter rains fill the Marin Headlands with life. Come spring, the wildflowers will be blossoming and soon we’ll see seal pups on the shores of Bonita Cove. I am so grateful to have this beautiful classroom to share with students from all backgrounds and to have the opportunity to teach them that our national parks are for everyone!
Stories
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Fall Reflections from NatureBridge Yosemite
As an environmental science educator, I spend a lot of time teaching about nature, but this season I’ve been finding that as it turns out, nature has a lot to teach us, too. Sometimes I can let the trees, the meadow, and the lichen teach for me. They show us how to respect each other’s boundaries, how to celebrate differences, how to work together, and how to lean on each other’s strengths in order to exist in a new place. These lessons felt incredibly relevant to me heading into the first week of November, a notoriously busy time at NatureBridge Yosemite. I wanted to focus on messages of kindness and inclusivity with my students, I wanted them to feel a sense of belonging in this new space, and I also hoped that they would share those messages with others.