Trinity students place trees for Arbor Day
Emma Malinak plants a white spruce for National Arbor Day at Trinity Middle School on Wednesday. She was among 50 students to place 150 trees on school grounds.
An overlay map of the hilly area behind Trinity High School shows the suggested areas and spacing for various tree species, including buttonbush, dogwood, crabapple pin oak and black locust.
Skylar Clawson holds tree seedlings as her classmates plant trees and discuss the importance of trees for National Arbor Day at Trinity Middle School on Wednesday.
Jillian Sander sliced through the soil, using a shovel to chop clay she just slung from a freshly dug hole.
The seventh-grader, who was among 50 Trinity Middle School students planting trees Wednesday, is no stranger to mud. After helping her grandmother plant various trees on the alpaca farm she used to own, she was ready to team up with her fellow students to plant 150 trees on school grounds.
“I’ve hit rock like six times already,” said an exasperated Sander, “so we’re just trying to find a spot that isn’t like a swamp or full of rock.”
Sander and other students got the opportunity to plant a mixture of five deciduous tree species and an evergreen variety with the help of science teacher Sharon Spadaro, as she won a $370 “Make Activities Count” grant through McDonald’s.
The cash was given to the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which provided the seedlings.
Washington & Jefferson College professors of environmental studies James March and Jason Kilgore helped out with the dig-and-plant event, as well as W&J student teacher Ezekial Stroupe.
“This is something they will see every time they come to school and remind them of the impact they’re having on improving their environment; their own backyard,” said Stroupe, a senior education major.
“This gets them outside and away from screens and it encourages students to be an active participant in life – to be an active participant of their own environment’s making,” Spadaro said.
“The takeaways I hope that stick with them is that this is their backyard, and they are caretakers of it. Too often with favorite animals polls it’s always something exotic like a polar bear or penguin, but there is a massive amount of biodiversity here. I hope it instills that curiosity about the ecosystems and the animals here.”
Worms and cicada nymphs were among the flora and fauna kids scooped around.
Kilgore took charge on the practical side of how and where to plant the various trees, providing a map of suggested plant locations on the roughly 2-acre hillside behind the middle school.
A latter portion of the class was a photography lesson. March led the students in composing articulate shots of nature.
“With the help of the Washington Community Foundation, we’ve been able to bring out 13 cameras, ranging from old-school to point-and-shoot. But as you see, a lot of them are bringing their phone cameras. Whatever they’re using, we’re just trying to show them how to frame a good picture that illustrates what was going on in front of you at the time, whether that’s the cicada nymphs just coming out of the ground, or the seedling you just planted, it’s about showing nature as it is,” March said.
But the lessons weren’t all bright and rosy forecasts. With the clay and swampy conditions at the bottom of the hill, Kilgore said not all trees would survive.
“There is a decent mortality rate with planting seedlings. But that’s part of why we’re planting so many,” Kilgore said.
“And the kids will see which ones took off and then they can seek to answer those questions, ‘Why didn’t this tree grow?,’ ‘Why did this one grow faster?’ It’s part of a continuing learning experience.”