Pioneer Region - Cuyahoga and Medina County Farm Bureaus
Sixth- through 12th-grade teachers in Cuyahoga and Medina counties took part in a watershed education workshop at Champion Creek in Roscoe-Ewing Park in Medina. Cuyahoga and Medina Soil and Water Conservation Districts (SWCD) organized the workshop with grant money garnered by the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation. Beth Schnabel from Medina SWCD, who led the workshop, used OFBF’s AWARE (Agricultural Watershed Awareness and Resource Evaluation) kit to show the teachers the quality of the urban Champion Creek. The hands-on training covered chemical and biological surveys, habitat assessments and stream bioengineer practices. The teachers could see what organisms were living in the creek and what type of chemicals run through it. "This was a nice opportunity to network with teachers and offer a perspective that maybe the teachers who are removed from agriculture wouldn’t have thought of before," said Jason Hazen, Medina County Farm Bureau promotion and education chair. "They can take what they learned at the workshop and use it in their classrooms. When you provide teachers with information, the reach of your message is infinite." CAPTION: Teachers from Medina and Cuyahoga counties learned what was living and growing in their local watersheds during a workshop at Roscoe-Ewing Park. Photo by Jason Hazen | |