Clearwater at Bonanza Creek: Fostering Science & Leaders in Training Camps!

In July, current PhD student Tabytha Clearwater participated as an instructor in two camps led by the Bonanza Creek LTER: Fostering Science and Leaders in Training. Fostering Science uses land-based experiences, art, and creativity to bring exciting natural science lessons to Alaskan youth in foster care. Leaders in Training (LIT) confers valuable professional and career skills to youth who have completed Fostering Science previously, and they serve as youth guides for new campers. Thanks to funds from a recent NSF grant, youth in the LIT program received a stipend for attending camp and honing their leadership skills.

Clearwater, who has worked previously as a K-12 science teacher, supported University of Alaska Fairbanks staff through lesson planning, preparation, and activity leadership. She had lots of fun leading lessons about plant identification, field work best practices, and lab dissection, but also enjoyed teaching about science communication strategies, writing e-mails, and searching for jobs. This year’s camp theme centered on mutualism: how all of us bring together our unique strengths to benefit our community and help each other grow.

“I got to show the LITs how to identify, collect, and process samples of plants like clover. Then we found root nodules, prepared microscope slides for them to look at all the bacteria in the nodules, and they learned about the mutualistic relationship between the bacteria and the plant. And then they wrote a play together about the whole thing, to teach the younger campers about mutualism. That was really cool!

But I think my favorite was the bad e-mails lesson. I asked them to pretend they were writing to a potential employer about a job interview, and to write the worst, most unprofessional e-mails they could think of. Then we worked together to rephrase them into messages that followed professional communication norms. They laughed a lot at that one, and I learned a lot of new slang!”