Rolling Hills Middle School 7th-graders and Louise Van Meter Elementary 5th-graders have completed an in-depth water monitoring educational course that highlighted what life as a professional H20 monitor would be like.
As part of the Poseidon Education’s Stormwater Quality Leadership Program, the kids took samples, learned about toxic substances, gained presentation skills and earned a certificate of completion.
“The kids actually took stormwater samples when it rained,” said Patti Zachary, the president and CEO of Carlsbad-based Poseidon. “The samples got sent to a certified lab. And then they got results back, as if you were in a stormwater management program in a city.”
The Van Meter Students presented to representatives from the Town and Los Gatos Union School District, sharing their vision to protect waterways like the Los Gatos Creek and Guadalupe River.
“They actually had a slide presentation,” Zachary said. “It was really entertaining. They presented better than most adults I’ve seen.”
The Rolling Hills students also hit it out of the park, too, when they spoke at the City of Campbell, she added.
“They had a lot more technical solutions,” she said. “It was just really great to see.”
This educational opportunity falls in line with the latest science standards.
“Kids are doing exactly what the adults are doing,” Zachary said. “They’re doing it specifically on their school campus.”
That means looking for the downstream effects of fertilizer and petroleum products on the ecosystem.
The learners test for PH balance, nitrates, turbidity, phosphates, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand and coliform.
“Nitrates and phosphates in a waterway can cause a lot of problems; they can cause algal blooms and they can suck up a lot of oxygen from the aquatic life,” said Zachary, adding the students often begin to ask questions, such as, “Is our groundskeeper putting a lot of fertilizer on the grass?…Are they putting too much of it?”
Both programs were made possible via a $50,000 West Valley Stormwater Authority grant.
For these Silicon Valley youth, it was a chance at tactile learning.
“You’re actually doing something with your hands,” Zachary said. “It’s kind of a step back into reality, instead of just the virtual.”
The Van Meter pupils came up with plenty of awareness ideas. They created a mural, made educational video games and ran a trash collection program where other kids could earn handmade stickers.
They even went class-to-class educating the peers on environmental issues.
Zachary says these sorts of activities help to inspire confidence.
“They really engage; and it’s not just, Oh, we’re learning something that we’re going to forget later,” she explained. “For them to be able to put their ideas out there and actually see them come to fruition, it just develops a stronger sense of value in them—that AI’s not just going to solve everything for them.”
Plus, the course emphasizes the central role of water in our lives, she adds.
“It’s one of our most precious resources,” Zachary said. “But, it gets overlooked on so many levels.”
One of those levels: the employment front.
“People are forgetting that we do need these careers built,” she said, adding the industry is facing a “silver tsunami” of the old guard nearing retirement. “We don’t have that many people coming in behind them. The idea is to invigorate students…And it’s a good stable career. We’re always going to need water.”
