NE 00E02399
From glaciers to trade, water has touched every part of life and history in Wisconsin. These aspects and more were explored at the Wisconsin Youth Water Stories Summit; open to youth ages 8-17. Participants explore water on the landscape and write the story of their waterway. Youth used professional grade field equipment to study and collect data on the Wisconsin River including measuring pH, turbidity, and understanding how those variables impact their environment. Campers wrote a story about their experiences, their communities and water at home, and their interests. They shared these stories through skits, written stories, and posters at the final campfire. The Water Stories Summit is funded in part by the EPA's local environmental education grant program NE 00E02399.
Dr. Justin Hougham
Director, Upham Woods
Welcome to our video! This session concerns an ongoing project in which Upham Woods Outdoor Learning Center and partners throughout the state collaborate to engage youth from diverse backgrounds in outdoor, inquiry-driven explorations that feature hands-on experiences with data collection and science communication. Our presentation, entitled “Water Stories Summit,” looks at how students engage in field experiences and craft stories to advocate for water issues in their communities. This project is a practice and test of community science and represents our commitment to broadening scientific participation through accessible programs, expanded science communication, and a greater acceptance of how personal experience is interwoven in scientific experiences. We look forward to how new thinkers, science enthusiasts, and curious folks will respond to our water story.
To learn more about the Wisconsin Youth Water Stories Summit, visit: https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/uphamwoods/programs/residential-programs/wisconsin-water-stories/
To learn more about scientific storytelling at Upham Woods, visit: https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/uphamwoods/programs/dots-at-upham-woods/
We would love your feedback and comments. We also invite you to consider the following:
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hey folks - We have also developed at-home activities and questions designed for students to compliment the video! We will be sharing these with our educators and previous Water Stories Summit participants.
Science Communication and Community – includes thought-provoking questions about how to engage communities with water issues. Appropriate for older students (7th grade +)
Make your H2Own Story – includes prompts to discuss the content of the video.
Where is Your Water From– includes questions about water resource allocation and use.
Annette Walsh
Isabelle this looks interesting.
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hey Annette -thanks for checking out our project! It certainly was rewarding to do. Let me know if you have any questions or if there's anything else you want to share. I hope all is well in Illinois!
Jeffrey Ram
Your students sound engaged (your staff, too). Are those camping experiences one day encounters? a week? Overnight experiences or day camp? Is there follow-up with the students after they have returned to their communities?
Zoe Goodrow
Research Program Specialist
Hi Jeffrey, thank you for watching our video! The Water Stories Summit is a 3 day, 2 night experience. Participants stay overnight at our residential outdoor learning center, where they stay in cabins, make new friends, go on outdoor adventures including hiking, swimming fishing, and use professional-grade equipment on the Wisconsin River to measure water quality data. Many of our youth participants at the Water Stories Summit come from partnerships that we have year-round engagement with, such as the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee. At Upham Woods, we value long-term engagement with youth, as we believe they are most impactful. Thanks again for your thoughtful questions!
Cary Chadwick
Hi Zoe,
Per long-term engagement, do you follow the students that go through the Summit for some period after the experience to determine if there are any lasting impacts on them? If so, how is that measured/determined? Thanks!
Judi Fusco
Jeffrey Ram
Intense multi-day experiences for a select group of students is one approach. But how can this experience be scaled to a broader population? Our project aims to provide a place-based experience and learning activity at a city institution, the Belle Isle Aquarium. I'm interested in the research question of whether these relatively brief encounters (plus much more intense professional development with their teachers) can have a comparable or larger impact that a selective multiday experience, as in your project.
Judi Fusco
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Excellent point Jeffrey. We value ongoing and multiple opportunities for engagement with youth. To that end, the Water Stories Summit is one part of a larger program we offer to students in Milwaukee. The other portions include classroom facilitating, an all-ages community science fair called Science Strikes Back. In fact - the winners of the science fair are awarded two spots to the Water Stories Summit (one for them and one for a friend).
Cary Chadwick
Great work here, it looks like the participants are engaged and enjoying this program. I like how you were able to get the Lieutenant Governor involved. I think it helps youth see how important policy makers are in driving protection of our natural resources. I am curious about how you recruit your youth participants, particularly those that may be unfamiliar with nature based experiences or from more urban and/or underrepresented communities? At UConn, we are engaged in an intergenerational STEM learning experience (check it out here!) and while we have been successful at recruiting this cohort, it can be difficult. So rewarding when it all comes together though. Last question...I'm also curious about what kind of technology, if any, you incorporate into this program as teaching tools during the Summit? Thanks and fantastic work!
Zoe Goodrow
Research Program Specialist
Hi Cary, thank you for your follow-up questions after watching our video! We are thankful for Lieutenant Governor Barnes' participation. We believe that back and forth discourse between youth and adults is important, as it empowers youth to be change-agents and build confidence to communicate science and advocate for environmental issues. Many of our youth are recruited through existing partnerships with 4-H groups and K-12 schools in the Milwaukee area. We incorporate Digital Observation Technology Skills (DOTS) kits into all of our educational programming at Upham Woods, including the Water Stories Summit. Thanks for your thoughtful questions!
Leigh Peake
Great video -- definitely made me want to go back to camp! We have citizen science investigations that similarly get kids involved in these hands-on investigations and then follow up with a journal of middle-school science writing called Findings from the Field. It's been an exciting journey and we've been impressed but not necessarily surprised by the power of writing in the inquiry/thinking process. Like Cary Chadwick above, I'm very interested in the question of integrating technology. I'm also interested in kids' ability to get started on their water stories -- do you find you have to help them along, suggesting how stories might originate? We find students struggle to identify a high-quality research-able question of their own to investigate and perhaps starting with something like a water story would be an option.
Kenne Dibner
Zoe Goodrow
Research Program Specialist
Hey Leigh - thanks for your questions and for watching our video! We incorporate Digital Observation Technology Skills (DOTS) kits into all of our educational programming at Upham Woods, including the Water Stories Summit. We use the DOTS approach so participants can practice their data literacy skills in an environmental context. Thank you for mentioning the inquiry/thinking process that you share with your students - we too use inquiry-driven approaches in our programs at Upham Woods. For example, to answer your question about suggesting how stories (and researchable questions) originate, we first start with an inquiry activity, such as "I notice, I wonder, This reminds me of...", where we have students notice their surroundings and make observations that can develop into a research question. We also encourage students to be creative when developing their stories - they can report their scientific findings with a skit, poem, recipe, etc.! Thanks again for your thoughtful questions.
Carly Hintz
Impressive work and great video! I am delighted to see Lieutenant Gov. Barnes as well. Congratulations on implementing a truly impactful program for the youth of today and hopefully clean water for tomorrow.
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Lt Gov Barnes really made an impression on these youth! He did an excellent job answering questions and meeting the group where they were coming from.
Albert Byers, Ph.D.
Wonderful video, thank you for sharing! Informal definitely presents unique learning opportunities outside of the classroom. Kudos for the effort. I appreciate Zoe's question about the power of rich narrative tied to their own driving questions! Great NGSS stuff, congrats. I wonder...do you use, or what do you think of some of the tools to help build storylines, like Next Gen Storylines (if applicable to your efforts?), and as part of the written literacy, do you also have them engage in student-student discourse, or reading and commenting on each other's stories?
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hey Albert - youth presented their stories to each other and engaged in natural back and forth discussion about their projects. We are always refining and improving our storytelling approach. We lead students through an inquiry-based approach to explore a phenomena of interest. We have developed a data collection worksheet and a separate storytelling sheet that help guide students in developing their inquiry then towards crafting a story. There is certainly a wealth of resources through Next Gen Storylines - ones we intend to explore further.
Judi Fusco
Albert Byers, Ph.D.
Awesome Isabelle. Thank you for elaborating. Wonderful that the students are sharing their stories with each other too!
Judi Fusco
Isabelle Herde
Alison Heimowitz
School and Teacher Liaison
I love that this program uses "story" as a way to disseminate information. Because so many cultures use storytelling as a teaching method to share and interpret experiences, I'm wondering how you have involved these voices in the creation of your program?
Judi Fusco
Rick Heuer
Wonderful video! Watching this made me think that sometimes I take living near the Mississippi River for granted. Being able to experience nature is very rewarding. When I was a young boy I lived in Milwaukee and being involved with the Boy Scouts we went on adventures to the country to camps such as yours. Experiences like this were ingrained in my mind to this day...50 years later. Are you able to attract groups from the inner city such as the scouts? Storytelling is one of the oldest and emotionally engaging ways of communicating, which is also fun. Great job!
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hey Rick -we partner with community organizations and schools in Milwaukee to directly recruit youth to participate in the Water Stories Summit! We have partnered with scouts as well! Water and storytelling are universal to the human experience- everyone has a connection to them.
Judi Fusco
Senior Researcher Stem Teaching and Learning
What a beautiful setting to help people learn! Thank you for a great video.
I'm curious, when you hear the stories, do you help the youth think about what next steps they can do? How they can connect with others? I'm curious about if there are other organizations involved and how you help youth take next steps.
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Great question Judi - since the Lt. Governor was involved, we told the youth that we were going to send all their stories to him. We also encourage youth to write what their next steps or questions they still have into their stories. We do scientific storytelling with all of our groups that come out year-round as well. We collate all the stories they create with us and send them back to the school. The digital artifact can then be circulated to their school administration to demonstrate learning outcomes and back to the parents as well to share what they did! You can check out their stories (including the Water Stories Summit!) here: https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/uphamwoods/programs/dots-at-upham-woods/
Judi Fusco
Hiller Spires
Supporting learners' conceptual, analytical, and language practices in science is so important! I really appreciate how your project engages young people in the science of water by creating multiple points of entry through connections with personal experience, data gathering and analysis, and creative synthesis.
I'm curious how the Water Stories Summit, and more broadly the programs at Upham Woods structure recruitment and enrollment so as to broaden scientific participation. Our project team has been discussing and thinking deeply about capacity building, especially issues around equity, scalability, and sustainability, and we would appreciate your insights.
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hi Hiller thanks for sharing your thoughts! We have found that the multiple entry points do help with accessibility. As for broadening participation, we have been cultivating relationships with community organizations and schools in Milwaukee that are underserved. These relationships lead to collaboration and discussions about how to best support their students. We also dedicate a portion of our staff training to conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We look at our strategies for engagement and how our programming is or is not inclusive. Investing in our staff as much as our external partnerships has been essential in ensuring a welcoming and accessible space for all learners.
Brian Kruse
Thank you for sharing! I really enjoyed seeing how participants in the program are learning about, and forming, their own relationship to the environment in the watershed. It looks like an immersive experience for them, adding to the story of their own lives.
Kenne Dibner
Senior Program Officer
This is a great video - thank you so much for sharing, and especially for the land acknowledgement at the beginning.
I loved seeing how proud the kids were to have the lt. governor join you, which makes me wonder a bit about the communicating results and advocacy portion of the work. Can you share a little more about how you're encouraging youth to use their findings? How are you helping them distill findings into specific advocacy asks? Thanks so much for this wonderful video!
Judi Fusco
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hi Kenne- The stories were shared back with the Lt. Governor and we also followed up with the youth again just this week! Recirculating their stories and encouraging them to conduct a macroinvertebrate water quality investigation at their local water body - properly socially distancing of course.
Michael I. Swart
What a great resource and opportunity. My questions, as a fellow UW researcher, are hyper-local, so my apologies if my inquiries are limited in scope: Now that UW extension is in Madison, it would be great to see this program reach out to the schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District. Are there plans to expand this program locally here in Madison?
Isabelle Herde
Isabelle Herde
Program Director
Hi Michael-
We primarily focused on recruiting youth out of Milwaukee from community-based organizations (4-H, nature center afterschool programs) and schools (Milwaukee Public Schools) - though we had participants from all over the state. This year we were recruiting from those same places as well as coordinating with a few schools in Madison like James C Wright MS.