EcoTeam Back in Classrooms After Hurricane Hiatus
Ryleigh Johnson | February 4, 2024
The EcoTeam of Warren Wilson College (WWC) is back for another semester after the interruptions of Hurricane Helene. The team, which is an offshoot of the college’s Community Engagement program, brings WWC students into local third-grade classrooms as science educators.
Initially started as a senior’s capstone project in the early 2000s, EcoTeam’s focus is bringing hands-on science learning to kids. Jake Bruce, the AmeriCorps Vista who oversees the program, is especially interested in promoting interactive learning in the classroom.
“It's all about participation,” Bruce said. “We want awareness and effective dispositions, but we also want to adhere to the knowledge and skill standards of North Carolina.”
Since the early 2000s, the program has run on and off again, with a strong period from 2014-2018. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, WWC cut the AmeriCorps Vista position from Community Engagement, along with EcoTeam. The program lay dormant for several years before coming back in the spring of 2024. That’s when Chloe Bloodworth, a senior outdoor leadership major, joined the team.
“I joined Warren Wilson during COVID and our opportunities for community engagement were very small,” Bloodworth said. “It was really cool to have an opportunity to go beyond the Warren Wilson campus and teach kids about the environment.”
The EcoTeam places two students in three local elementary schools for lessons that run for seven weeks. These students prepare lessons written per North Carolina’s science standards about topics like river basins and pollination.
The team was gearing up for a full semester of teaching last fall when Hurricane Helene hit. After students returned to campus in the wake of the hurricane, the team decided they would not teach the lessons as planned.
Gabe Ranke, a sophomore environmental studies major, was especially disappointed at not being able to interact with the kids in a classroom setting. He had been looking for an educational community engagement opportunity when the Verner Crew, which formerly provided childcare at the Verner Center for Early Learning, was disbanded last year.
“It was an executive decision to not have anyone go into the classrooms, just to give them a bit of recovery time, which was a good decision, but it still sucked a little bit,” Ranke said.
In place of the planned seven weeks of lessons, the team quickly built a one-time pop-up lesson about herbalism.
“We went pretty back and forth and eventually agreed on medicinal herbs because it's something a lot of us in the group were interested [in] or knew a bit about,” Natalie Helser, a freshman on the team, said.
Helser, along with Bruce and other members of the team, worked to create a curriculum about the medicinal uses and identification of nettles. Then, in December, they took that curriculum into the classroom. It was a hit with both the kids and the WWC student teachers.
“During the pop-up lesson, I felt so rejuvenated and full all day because I love working with the kids,” Helser said. “So that's really nice. I think it's a pretty awesome opportunity for both the kids and the educators.”
This semester, the EcoTeam crew is excited to be back in classrooms engaging with kids. They remain committed to providing fun, hands-on educational opportunities for the kids they work with, not only for the enrichment of the students but for the health of the environment itself.
“I’m interested in teaching kids about the environment and trying to help promote that type of education to get people passionate about it from an early age so that they don't go with ideologies that make them hate the environment or think that it is something that human beings inherently own and can do whatever they want with,” Ranke said. “Part of our responsibility as people is to take care of the environment and be kind to it. And I think it's really important for kids to know that and understand that.”
Those interested in joining EcoTeam this semester can email Jake Bruce at jake-bruce@warren-wilson.edu, or stop by the Community Engagement office in the Log Cabin.