The River Mile has come a long way

A curriculum focused on students learning outdoors within the Columbia River watershed began locally and has grown to include thousands of students and teachers in the Pacific Northwest. 

The River Mile was awarded a $100,000 Environmental Education grant from the Environmental Protection Agency in late 2020.

Janice Elvidge has worked as the education specialist for the Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area since 2005. Her office is at Spring Canyon.

Tasked with coming up with an education plan for the park, Elvidge spoke with teachers to find out what they would like to see. Something involving the river is what many of them wanted.

Elvidge coordinated with experts and brought in people to train teachers in teaching about the river.

She told The Star in a conference call Monday that she "specialized in coordinating and pulling stuff together."

Around 2007 and 2008, a pilot program for The River Mile began with 10 local school districts, including the Grand Coulee Dam and Nespelem districts. 

From about 300-400 students at that time, the program now has a network "of over 200 educators, 4,200 students, and hundreds of other partners, including scientists," according to the website of The Lake Roosevelt Forum, a non-profit that supports research in the Upper Columbia River watershed, and a formal partner with the LRNRA, which does the administration portion of The River Mile. 

That expansion has happened over the years through word of mouth and participation in science and teaching conferences, Elvidge said. The project also works with universities and other organizations involved in watershed science, including the University of Idaho, the University of Washington, the University of Illinois, the REACH Museum in Richland, Spokane Riverkeeper, and Oregon State Parks.

Elvidge explained that multiple sciences and disciplines, including biology, botany, geography, and more, are connected to the Columbia River watershed. 

"The River Mile is more than just water. It's all about being in the watershed and part of the Columbia River watershed's health and anything and everything that happens within our watershed."

"People think NASA is just mars and the moon, but they have tons of resources available to teachers," Elvidge continued, mentioning Landsat (land satellite photos) as tools available for helping study the watershed. "With my connections, I've been able to bring those resources to The River Mile network." 

A key project of The River Mile is studying crayfish, including invasive species and possible new species, with data collected by students being used by universities. 

"There's not a ton of information known about crayfish in the Pacific Northwest," Elvidge said. The River Mile is "getting boots on the ground," she said, and finding out "what [people who study] crayfish are seeing and where?"

"Then we go from there," she said. "The professors think there is an undescribed species they are thinking might be an unknown, undocumented species in the Sun Lakes area. It was assumed it was a signal crayfish, but the professors think it very well could be another species. No one's collected and done anything with it. Also in the high Okanogans up towards Canada, there's the same thing going on. What was assumed was a signal may be a new species."

When specimens of those crayfish are collected, they can be shipped off to the University of Illinois for DNA testing to find out if they are indeed new or undocumented species of crayfish. 

Rick Reynolds, who designed the crayfish curriculum for The River Mile and has worked with them since 2017, was also on the conference call with The Star.

Reynolds is also the founder of Engaging Every Student, based in the Portland, Oregon area, has authored or co-authored 18 books and curriculum guides, and is the project coordinator for the EPA grant.

He said the grant money will help pay for things like teacher training, crayfish kits that include traps and tools, water quality kits, transportation funds so students can travel to outdoor locations, and more. 

During COVID, The River Mile is currently focused on trainings, but there is some activity being done outside. He hopes more students will be able to go outside and participate later this year. 

Having taught all ages up to the high school level for 25 years, Reynolds said teaching students outdoors is important for a number of reasons. 

"What I learned through the years is the best projects are connected to the students' place where they can go outdoors and do investigations," he said. 

Projects done outside offer students an experience that  "you can't replace or recreate in the classroom," he said. "The magic was getting out there where students could see the direct impact of their work." 

He said that research shows that learning outdoors increases student engagement, is better for physical and mental health, that there is a correlation between a decrease of anxiety and depression and going outdoors and being active, and that students remember what they learn more "because it was the way our brains were designed to learn."

"We don't know that much about the brain, but what we do know 100 percent for sure is that the human brain evolved to be in an outdoor environment with constantly changing meteorological conditions and a state of almost constant motion," Reynolds said, citing the work of Dr. John Medina, a neuroscientist from the University of Washington. "So if you wanted to design a classroom environment that is exactly the opposite to the way the brain is designed to learn, put them in a classroom."

"Most districts out there are limited in getting students out, so that's my number-one passion and what I try to support," said Reynolds. 

Elvidge agreed, saying it was important for students to do "field investigations, doing the actual science not just in a classroom, but actually being outdoors doing the work outdoors the way scientists do the work."

Elvidge said the field work seems to be correlated with raised test scores, and that she knows of students who have turned their academic lives around for the better through the project.

"We want to continue to spread this word that there are great ways of getting students engaged," she said. 

Trainings for teaching the curriculum are available, including upcoming live trainings on March 23 and 30.

More info on The River Mile can be found at http://www.therivermile.org .