Dallas students show passion for environment

Under the sunny skies of their outdoor classroom, Dallas Intermediate School students on Tuesday afternoon celebrated the grand opening of an outdoor environmental education library, filled with books about wildlife, gardening and nature.

The library is in a colorful cabinet, located just outside of the Wycallis Elementary Library, and teacher Deborah Pike said anyone is welcome to borrow a book.

While the library opening was an official reason for Tuesday’s gathering, Mrs. Pike’s fifth-grade gifted support students had other things to celebrate — including the recent announcement that they won the top award in the UNLESS Contest sponsored by the Philadelphia Zoo.

The contest invites students to learn about and promote an endangered species, and the Dallas team, sporting green shirts that declared them to be Turtle Titans, had chosen the Eastern box turtle as their focus.

“Some kids wanted it to be the tamarin,” 12-year-old Nadia Kolinovsky said, explaining to a reporter that animal is a monkey. She and her friend Ainsley Campbell, 11, both said they had voted for the Eastern box turtle, which is native to the Eastern United States.

The Turtle Titans’ project, chosen from among 80 competing projects, involved designing a “story walk” at Frances Slocum State Park as well as cleaning up some local wetlands. A team of student writers also created a story with an environmental message, making it simple enough for kindergarten children to understand.

“It starts out with a mom coming home and telling her kids they have to find a new place to live,” 11-year-old Maria Colburn said, explaining that the mom and her kids are not humans, but turtles, and they have to find a place that will be clean enough for them to thrive.

When asked about problems box turtles face, 11-year-old Bodhi Gover mentioned “polluted ponds.”

“Trash everywhere,” added his classmate, 11-year-old Ben Siegel.

But the students are doing their part. Not only did they pitch in to clean up wetlands at the Hanover Crossings, Mrs. Pike said they will donate part of their $1,250 award from the UNLESS Contest to the North Branch Land Trust, with the goal of conserving land so it will provide a healthy habitat for wildlife, especially the turtles.

Under the guidance of Mrs. Pike, who is retiring next week, and teacher Kristy Taylor, who engineered the outdoor classroom project, the students have developed a passion for the environment, several adults said.

The outdoor classroom boasts a Butterfly Cafe, now a registered Monarch Waystation, where milkweed has been planted to attract monarch butterflies. Nearby, other native plants have been planted to attract other pollinators, and a vegetable garden is planned, so kids can see where food gets its start.

The outdoor classroom is a place where students can connect with nature, Ms. Taylor said, noting she recently spotted “a crow flying overhead with something in its mouth,” which lead to an on-the-spot nature discussion.

As for pollinators, she said, “We had two caterpillars on the milkweed …”

Then, grinning as she pointed out a white cabbage butterfly that was flitting through the greenery in the outdoor classroom on Tuesday, she said. “See It’s working!.”