Learning by doing: Pierce College and Idlewild Elementary students work together on restoration project in Lakewood

You can learn about restoring ecosystems from books and lectures or you can tromp into the field and pull up the invaders that are crowding out native plants.

Working side by side, Pierce College students and Idlewild Elementary School fifth-graders used all those means and more to study habitat restoration at the Fort Steilacoom campus in Lakewood.

“I’ve learned a lot about the different types of native plants,” 11-year-old Rosalie Maack said during a recent visit to the campus. 

Surrounded by the buttery yellow invasive shrub Scotch broom, the Idlewild fifth-grader said, “We have special native plants and we shouldn’t bring other plants over because that just messes up the whole ecosystem. … The Scotch broom is taking away our native plants.”

The project proved to be a prime example of service learning – younger and older students learning together while performing a service for the community.

Pierce College Assistant Professor Elysia Mbuja set up the collaboration with Idlewild with the help of a $1,500 federal Perkins grant. The fieldwork was conducted on the acreage behind the Rainier building on the Fort Steilacoom campus. 

Restoring the Garry Oak woodland
Efforts are underway to restore the land – from the edge of the campus northeast to Fort Steilacoom Park – to its natural state as a Garry Oak woodland, Mbuja said. The decades-long initiative requires removing invasive shrubs and grasses, and replacing them with Garry Oak trees, snowberry, nootka rose and other native plants.

“It was a good opportunity for both groups of students to make an interpersonal connection and a connection with the community,” Mbuja said, “and provide real data to a project with longevity.”

Intro biology students design lesson
The project started with students from Mbuja’s two introductory biology classes designing and presenting a lesson on inherited characteristics to two fifth grade classes at Idlewild, which is in the Clover Park School District.

The following week, the fifth-graders and their teachers, Liz O’Connell and Joe Olive, headed to the Fort Steilacoom campus, an adventure in itself. 

“Having the fifth-graders come to the college campus is pretty cool,” said Idlewild student Rafi Mbuja, Mbuja’s 10-year-old son.

Rooting out the invaders
Using plant guides to help them identify native and invasive vegetation, teams of Pierce students and fifth-graders recorded the number of native plants and invasive plants they found, and documented the plants’ stage of growth and other data.  

Then they proceeded to the hard part: Pulling and digging out Scotch broom and Himalayan blackberry bushes. 

At one point, Pierce student Shannon McEwen shook a branch of Scotch broom loaded with pods, creating a shower of tiny seeds. “They fall off and land on the ground, and all these seeds can create a new Scotch broom plant,” she said to a fifth-grader. “That’s one way it can take over because it produces so many seeds.”

“A real-world example”
Idlewild teacher Liz O’Connell said the project meshed well with the fifth-graders’ study of conflict in ecosystems and the changes that result.

“With these invasive species coming in and changing the ecosystem, it’s a real-world example for them,” she said. 

Grant Reed, a Steilacoom High student in the Pierce College Running Start program, enjoyed the service-learning aspect of the biology course.

“It was good to learn about, and actually get, hands-on stuff rather than just reading a book or going to lectures,” the 18-year-old said.  “And it was fun because we were able to teach the kids. 

“When you teach, it kind of helps you to learn it yourself, too.”

And that’s the whole point of service learning.

See more photos from the project here.