Life on the Genesee: Rochester students set sail, study science
The task: to sift through a sludge-filled plastic bin and trap some macro-invertebrates, or "friends without a skeleton," as instructor Carter Remy called them.
But the little buggers were elusive. Maybe it was the lack of skeleton.
This was low-tech science at its finest. The only tools at hand were plastic spoons and cups and the fine motor skills of the fifth-graders from Rochester's John Williams School 5. They were steaming down the Genesee River on a beautiful fall day before the snow began to fall, part of a science riverboat cruise sponsored by the Rochester Education Foundation.
On the bow, some of their classmates were measuring the water temperature and turbidity and scanning the shoreline for egrets, herons and Canada geese. Others were conducting experiments related to water chemistry.
Easy, compared to scooping a midge out of the muck with a cafeteria spoon.
"Yeah, I got you now!" a boy proclaimed. A quick turn under the microscope served to identify the quarry: a damselfly larva.
Science teacher Kim Jarzembowski was following along with her students while Remy and others led the three stations. Each of the lessons aligned with their typical classroom material.
“Kids are natural scientists; their whole life is inquiring," she said. "So this is them asking questions and getting to answer them themselves. You can’t reproduce this in the classroom."
Every fifth-grader in RCSD will get a chance to take the science cruise this school year thanks to funding from local philanthropist Dave Beck and the Rochester Education Foundation. It's one of a slew of opportunities being made available to Rochester school children, known collectively as the SMILE program.
Many SMILE program initiatives, including the science cruises, are closely aligned with the curriculum and state standards. Others — hot air balloons, library murals, playground equipment — are simply for fun with no strings attached. That's an important goal of all the grants as well.
Indeed, for many of the students it was more than just an engaging science experiment. Two thirds of the fifth-graders said they'd never been on a boat before in their lives.
"I don't want to go back to school," one of them called out.
The joke was on him — this was school.
Rochester Education Foundation was launched 20 years ago as a way to supplement children's education in Rochester.
It has three well known initiatives:
The Rochester College Access Network and FAFSA Fest, ensuring that high school students have the resources they need for college, including financial aid
Give Back, Give Books, a book donation program that has provided more than 75,000 new books to RCSD children since 2005
Music and Arts For All, which collects used musical instruments, notably at the Rochester International Jazz Festival, and distributes them to students
Rochester Education Foundation sponsors real-world science
REF founder Pat Braus served as executive director until her retirement last year. The new permanent leader, Amy Stein, saw an immediate opportunity in the SMILE program, which Beck has singlehandedly funded and operated for the last decade.
Besides the science river cruises, SMILE also features Mission to Mars, a space travel simulation, and an enormous inflatable whale, large enough to walk around inside, that travels to different schools.
Direct grants to school parent-teacher organizations, meanwhile, support each school's own projects.
"What we want to think about is how we can be as uniquely helpful as possible," Stein said. "When Dave first presented this – immediately, I just thought: ‘This is a perfect match for exactly what REF does.'"
Kaeti Stoss, an environmental educator at Rochester Institute of Technology, was another of the lead instructors on the science riverboat cruise. Part of the appeal, she said, is helping students contextualize their lessons within the rest of their lives.
"People in Rochester sometimes think of the Genesee River as dirty, but when you’re out here it’s actually really beautiful," she said. "Maybe they can see their neighborhood or the hospital where their parents work, so that connects the science to their lives and gives them that sense of pride of place."
The round trip went from Corn Hill Landing to south of Genesee Valley Park and took about 90 minutes. There were wistful sighs as the students disembarked and headed toward their waiting bus.
"I'm going to go home and mix some water with another kind of water," one said.
Jahvier Goins was one of the students who had never been on a boat before. He was most interested in using the binoculars to spot birds and disturbances in the water, but also waving at kayakers and reading the graffiti under the bridges.
"It's a lot more interesting to explore the water like this," he said. "When you're, you know, out in the world."
For more information on Rochester Education Foundation, go to www.rochestereducation.org.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: SMILE program: Every Rochester 5th-grader to cruise Genesee River
