This text is part of the Teachers’ Week special booklet
For twenty years, the organization Bassin versant Saint-Maurice has enabled schools to adopt a watercourse. A way to allow students to analyze themselves the state of health of a river near their school and to propose possible solutions to improve it.
At Du Rocher high school, students will paint an overall portrait of the state of the water in the Grand-Mère River over the next three years.
The idea of the “J’adopte un cours d’eau” project is to encourage students to develop scientific skills and knowledge, while making them aware of environmental issues. “They go and look for scientific data in the rivers, collect fish or macro-invertebrates, small insects living in the bottoms of the rivers”, describes the director general of the Education and Eco-surveillance Group. of water (G3E) at the origin of the project, Nathalie Piedboeuf.
Assess stream health
At Rocher high school, science teachers chose the Grand-Mère River, within walking distance of the school. A group of 3e secondary and two of 4e secondary school went to explore the river on October 17 and 18, 2022. “They collected biochemical tests, physical data, they were able to observe the state of the banks, the surrounding trees, and collect macro-invertebrates. We then looked at them with binoculars to classify them,” says teacher Marie-Eve Landry.
This one jokes: at the start of the project, some students were skeptical about going in the water and putting on overalls. “But once in the field, I saw stars in the eyes of many of them,” notes the teacher.
All the data is then put online, publicly available on the G3E website, using an interactive map that shows all the rivers adopted by schools. Over three years, this makes it possible to see the evolution of the health of the watercourse and to be able to put in place actions, if it deteriorates. “It also helps to raise students’ awareness of global warming, which can have an impact on a river near our home,” said Ms.me Landry. “We use Google Maps in particular to see what is nearby, such as agriculture, businesses in action…” she adds.
The data will be used by the G3E organization to propose concrete actions to protect waterways. “Of course, the data is collected by young people, so the bias is greater. But what is interesting is to compare from year to year whether health is improving or deteriorating,” says Nathalie Piedboeuf.
As the project expands across the province and even beyond, into Manitoba and New Brunswick, G3E is working with local organizations and biologists to intervene in schools. “If the health of a waterway deteriorates, organizations and municipalities will be able to act directly”. Some schools have also made it possible to report problems quickly, and to release funds. “It’s happened before, oil spills in a river near a school, and if the young people hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t have known about it,” notes Ms.me Piedboeuf.
She also believes that youth engagement helps accelerate action. “When young people find something, they will talk to their mayor about it, and it’s often more meaningful than if we do it, it pushes local actors to react,” she said.
Teach science differently
For Marie-Eve Landry, the experience was more than rewarding. “It allowed us to get out of our usual classroom setting and go into the field,” she says. Not only does she feel that this helped to motivate her students, but also to break out of the traditional way of teaching and “reignite a little flame” on her side.
Nathalie Piedboeuf specifies that a study is also underway with a professor of education to see what impact this project has on young people, in particular on their power to act. The results should be made public next summer. In the meantime, she hears positive echoes from former participants in the project, whom she sometimes finds in her teams. The project has existed since the 2000s and the demand for schools to participate is only increasing.
For his part, M.me Landry is already looking forward to repeating the experience with other students later this year. “Science is not learned by the ears, but by the eyes and the hands, so field experience is essential,” she believes. While waiting for the next cohort, the action continues. In the spring, student volunteers can clean up the banks of the Grand-Mère River.
This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the Duty, relating to marketing. The drafting of Duty did not take part.