Environmental Education at the Princeton-Blairstown Center

Identification chart

Imagine a beautiful forest setting with clean air, miles of trails, and clear streams. Now imagine you were back in school in such a setting. Your teacher gives you a bucket, a net, maybe some petri dishes and magnifying glasses, and a species identification chart. Would you be excited for your lesson?

Environmental education is taught in classrooms around the world but there is something special about learning about the environment, in the environment that you are learning about. The National Environmental Education Foundation reported that students who participate in programs and activities outdoors show an increase in intrinsic motivation and improvement in student’s learning attitudes. You may not have access to a beautiful 268-acre campus like the Princeton-Blairstown Center every day, but that is ok! Your school yard, playground, or nearby parks and public lands work just as well when implementing an immersive environmental education curriculum.

Two students explore the water at the Center as part of their stream study.

Even if you are unfamiliar with environmental education but are willing and able to take your students on a field trip, the Princeton-Blairstown Center is the place to go! We offer fifteen curriculum-aligned programs for students featuring inquiry-based, hands-on science learning. Each program combines outdoor exploration with STEM- and SEL-reinforcing activities to help participants engage more deeply with science and the scientific method. Our environmental education curriculum is aligned to middle school curriculum standards. However, Center staff can help high school teachers plan the use of our outdoor classroom for higher-level, hands-on biology and environmental/earth science classes

Environmental education not only improves academic achievement according to the National Environmental Education Foundation but it also encourages environmental stewardship, deepens personal development and wellbeing, and strengthens communities.

Courses at the Center include everything from forest ecology, stream science, phenology and climate change to ornithology, nocturnal animals, and amphibian studies. Our Environmental Education page has course descriptions and previews.

Many species call the Princeton-Blairstown Center home and your experience may include canoeing by a busy beaver building a dam, listening to owls at dusk, or turning over rocks in a search for salamanders. Whatever program you choose, your experience will be authentic, engaging, and spark an interest in learning.

Students carefully hold salamanders.

Participants at the Center smile about their hands-on experience with salamanders.

Clean Energy Week 2021

September is the month of Zero Emissions Week, and more locally, Climate Week NYC!

Sustainability is a core value of the Princeton-Blairstown Center. From water turbine installation in the 1970s to produce power from the water flowing over the Bass Lake Dam, to the (now defunct) earth oven originally constructed near the Center’s garden site, to the solar panels on Egner Lodge, the Center has a track record of employing sustainability technology, and using it to both lower the Campus’s carbon footprint and explore science and technology with students.

This year, a number of these clean energy initiatives were included in the Center’s revised Environmental Education curriculum. To further encourage familiarity and impromptu education about the clean energy initiatives at the site, a set of five interpretive signs were designed and placed around Campus to highlight the infrastructure, the science concepts behind the technology, and the benefits each initiative brings to the Center. The signage was installed by the Facilities team, and is referenced by facilitators and staff as they move around property with program participants, Board members, and funders.

As with the efforts of the Program team to use the technology for teaching, one of the most exciting features of the Center’s clean energy technology is seeing it in action. When a local group brought a women’s retreat to campus, a participant used the new EV charging station to recharge their vehicle while they attended workshops. The solar panels on Egner Lodge have a feature that allows anyone with an internet connection to check their estimated output and carbon reduction. And the Center’s garden is a delicious example of sustainable practices for caloric energy, taking in food waste from the dining hall, turning it into nutrient-rich soil via composting, and using inputs of time, sun, and water to turn it into fresh produce to be served to students and staff – “clean” energy for minds and bodies.

So Much More Than Soil - SEL and Gardening

As an embodiment of our core values, PBC’s facilitators strive to connect environmental experiences not just to academic concepts, but to social emotional learning (SEL) and social justice movements as well. This June, a time of year where our gardens are creating ample amounts of nourishing food for plates in Egner Lodge, we are exploring the additional role of the PBC garden in nourishing skills, meaningful connections, and the relationship between participants and the planet.  

As Todd McPherson, Urban Garden Coordinator at Luther Burbank High School mentions in Students Use Gardening to Develop Social Emotional Learning Skills, “A functioning and productive garden space [is also a] very interactive outdoor classroom…really, we can incorporate just about any discipline into the gardens.” Other interviews in the video make the case for conducting mentorship and other leadership lessons in a garden setting, which is something we have been facilitating with our Summer Bridge, Leader-In-Training, and Wilderness Leadership School participants for several years.

The video also emphasizes the observed increase in empathy among students learning and interacting with the living organisms endemic to gardens. The graduate thesis Growing Citizens: Students’ Social Emotional Learning via School Gardens elaborates on how “In addition to academic learning goals, gardening has the potential to provide students with a sense of empathy related to nature that may [help develop] pro-environmental stances later in life. Gardening may also contribute to the attainment of related citizenship skills such as collaboration and communication.”                               

Garden helpers hold up giant kohlrabi they helped harvest from the PBC garden. Produce harvests go to Chef Bob, who turns them into delicious meals for Egner Lodge.

Ron Franco, Senior Program Manager, shared some of his perspective about working with students in the PBC garden, and how observing and caring for the living things in a garden space are effective catalysts for deeper conversations and connections that reach far beyond the boundary fence.      

 “Over the past four years, [our] garden has proved fruitful in more ways than one can imagine. It provides an interactive, colorful, and lively learning experience for our curious participants, a place where we engage in thought-provoking, hands-on garden curriculum and activities.” As participants work together toward common goals in the space, they practice collaborative skills, and “rejoice in the wonders while soaking in colorful inspiration and novel experiences, such as tasting a vine-ripe cherry tomato or other garden treat for the first time in their lives…Hopefully, these eye-opening moments and stirring experiences will help ignite [participants’] interest in sustainable agriculture, green movements, and food justice. Through the garden, PBC helps plant a small seed of hope and opportunity for our future nature-conscious leaders.”

Learning Leadership in the Outdoors

In a year full of unexpected detours, rethinking, and “firsts,” the Center will offer a fall semester of environmental education and outdoor skills instruction for the inaugural iteration of Wilderness Leadership School.

The Center’s natural setting is a perfect outdoor classroom; multiple distinct habitats enable a wide variety of STEAM activities and nature/ecology study.

Conceptualizing the program started when, over the summer months, hopes of students having a “normal” school year were dashed as the country experienced a brisk resurgence of the Covid-19 cases, including in places where schools tried re-opening for in-person instruction. Considering Governor Murphy’s decision to allow school districts to create remote and hybrid school day options for students as an opportunity for programmatic innovation, the PBC Program team put their heads together to create a new curriculum and unique outdoor learning experience for Fall 2020. 

Offered weekly for a full day’s worth of exploration and discovery, Wilderness Leadership School offers students ages 7-18 a chance to experience the Center’s Blairstown Campus as an outdoor classroom. After a full summer of practice with the Center’s Family Camp programs, PBC facilitators are ready to lead socially-distanced explorations of watersheds, forest ecology, or other environmental education topics each morning. After a balanced boxed lunch prepared in-house by Chef Bob, afternoon sessions will include outdoor competency and skill-building such as canoeing and kayaking, shelter- and fire-building, wilderness survival skills, orienteering, water safety, and adventure and climbing course instruction.

Last year’s Homeschool Program participants encourage one another on the ropes course.

“With the many different versions of what students’ school days will look like this fall, there was an opportunity to offer families a way to supplement to traditional instruction, while observing social distancing and providing an opportunity for safer peer-group interactions,” said Pam Gregory, President and CEO of the Center. “Our outdoor spaces have long been used for summer learning, so it seemed only natural they could be an asset at a time when gathering indoors is not advised.”

To learn more, to share this opportunity with students and families in your life, or to register, please visit the Wilderness Leadership School page.

PBC Reflects As Earth Day Turns 50!

“The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share.” —Lady Bird Johnson 

In the 50 years since the first Earth Day was held in 1970, much in our world has changed. Yet, we still haven’t figured out how to replace clean water, clean air, and clean soil as foundations of healthy communities. Since our planet’s health is directly connected to the health of all living things, Princeton-Blairstown Center has long been committed to sharing care, education, and stewardship for our shared home. On this Earth Day – which is taking place as a natural phenomenon upends modern life as we know it – we chose to focus on the ways PBC continues to strive for positive planetary impacts. Here is a sampling of our current sustainability initiatives in our ongoing efforts to be better neighbors to all fellow Earthlings. 

Sustainable Agriculture/Garden Programming 
-Ron Franco, Sr. Program Manager  
In celebration of Earth Day 2020, I wanted to take a meandering stroll down a path of gratitude!  

Throughout my four-year tenure at the Princeton-Blairstown Center (PBC), I have seen our lovely garden grow from just a mere plot producing some veggies to a fully interactive “classroom!” Over the past several seasons, PBC Staff including Chef Bob, devoted Program Managers, and enthusiastic Facilitators have transformed a simple plot of land into an environmental hub of curiosity and learning!   

As a Program team, we have devoted time and energy to creating thoughtful and engaging garden activities and initiatives for our participants. During Summer Bridge 2019, the garden was quite lively, filled with nature knowledge shared through captivating STEM and Literacy lessons facilitated by our talented summer staff.  

roN fRANCO WORKS WITH a leader-in-training IN THE pbc gARDEN IN SUMMER 2018.

Students are encouraged to explore the natural environment of the garden through activities like Mystery of the Food Cycle, which investigates the path our food takes to get from farm to plate, or The Superhero Veg Head Symposium, which entices youth to use their imaginations, have fun, and build team while creating a Vegetable Super Hero!    

Last season, the PBC garden produced more than 375 pounds of nutritious, naturally-grown fruits and veggies that were harvested and brought to share in Egner Lodge Dining Hall. Students were able to eat the food they harvested, and it was a pleasure to provide a Garden-to-Participant-Plate experience to our students and staff. As a bonus, scraps from the dining hall are also composted. The compost is then used to enrich our garden soil, which helps to create as closed-loop a system as possible on our Campus. 

Currently, we have 100 spring transplants in the ground including broccoli, kale, Swiss chard, lettuce, cauliflower, and cabbage. We also recently donated 55 pounds of kitchen scraps (that otherwise would have gone directly to a landfill) to a local homesteader to feed his family chickens!  

This Earth Day, I am infinitely grateful for the opportunity to work with new and fellow staff, as well as new and returning students, to help foster a brave generation of Earth Stewards and Shepherds. 

Environmental Education 
Newly revised for 2020, PBC is excited to offer five curriculum-aligned programs for students featuring inquiry-based, hands-on science learning. Each program combines outdoor exploration with STEM- and SEL-reinforcing activities to help students engage more deeply with both science and the scientific method.

Three months of intensive work by our Program staff created a comprehensive curriculum guide for our facilitators, offering multiple learning extensions for older or younger students, indoor and outdoor expansion activities, as well as a meticulous list of applicable NY and NJ Science Standards to help teachers identify which programs will best suit their students’ learning journeys.

All program topics were selected with a sharp focus on the experiential, hands-on learning that PBC can provide. We are looking forward to sharing our Forest Ecology – Plants, Forest Ecology – Animals, Stream Science, Sustainable Living: Gardens and Soil, and Sustainable Living: Energy programs with students as soon as our Blairstown Campus is reopened! 

Renewable Energy 

WATER FLOWS OVER THE BASS lAKE DAM at pbc.

Solar: PBC’s solar panels were installed in 2007, and in 13 years have produced more than 100,500 kilowatt hours of energy and helped us avoid over 70,000 kilograms of CO2 emissions! There is even a real-time monitoring page that allows visitors to check in on the latest energy-generation statistics, and chart how productive the panels are on any given day.

Geothermal: The newest addition to PBC’s suite of sustainable energy initiatives, 4,900 linear feet of antifreeze-filled tubing was sunk to the bottom of Bass Lake during renovations to Danielson Lodge in 2019. Stored at depths below 10 feet, the liquid inside the tubing maintains a constant 50-degree, year-round temperature, which is then circulated to hyper-efficiently heat or cool the building. The most economical of all geothermal system designs, this setup burns zero fossil fuels for heat, and releases no pollutants!

Hydroelectricity: In 1984, with the help of the Princeton University alum Walt Hallagan ’79 and his dedicated group of hydro helpers, the Center added a hydropower generation system at the base of the Bass Lake Dam that generated between three and four kilowatts of power daily under optimal conditions. Recent multi-year reconstruction efforts on the dam necessitated changes to the design of the system and turbine. In 2020, PBC hopes to return the hydro generator to operational status once water flow patterns over the dam are fully restored.  

Virtual/Distance-Learning Resources 

At this unprecedented moment, with our Earth experiencing an extended pause from the action-packed hustle and bustle of modern human life, PBC is offering a wide range of virtual programming and online content to help you connect with nature and celebrate our shared planet. Join us on our Facebook page on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 3:30 pm to catch our latest virtual learning videos or Facebook Live features, which will continue to be offered as long as possible during our Covid-19 Campus closure. Our entire Program staff are working and learning together (while social distancing, no less!) to create these informative, fun, and engaging environmental education and social emotional learning lessons. We hope you will join us for the journey!

Vernal Pools and Springtime Symphonies

(Editors note: This post is adapted from a piece written by PBC Senior Program Manager Ron Franco, who regularly highlights natural and seasonal phenomena to enhance staff knowledge.)

With everything else going on at this moment in time, it might easily be overlooked that it is again the right time of year for us to listen to the sweet symphony of spring peepers and their merry band of amphibian friends! As Old Man Winter relents, our spritely amphibian neighbors gear up for a productive reproductive spring. Today’s topic, vernal pools, play an incredibly important role for local species such as the Spring Peeper, Wood Frog, Bull Frogs, Pickerel Frog, and many others.

Vernal pools, also called vernal ponds or ephemeral pools, are seasonal pools of water that provide a unique type of wetland habitat. They are typically small, shallow, ephemeral water bodies, and unlike a pond or a lake, they have no permanent inlet or outlet. To be considered a vernal pool, a depression must hold water for at least two consecutive months, typically between February and June. Pools are filled each spring by rain and snow melt, then dry up during the summer.

Why are vernal pools important?
Vernal pools serve as essential breeding habitat for certain species of wildlife, including salamanders and frogs (amphibians). Vernal pools lack breeding fish populations. The absence of fish is an essential characteristic of these ecosystems, as fish are highly predatory on amphibian eggs and larvae. In addition to being critical for amphibians, vernal pools provide habitat to many species of insects, reptiles, plants, and other wildlife. 

Over the course of evolution, several species of salamanders and frogs came to rely on these fish-free water bodies. Today, these species exhibit "hardwired" instincts and behaviors that are geared exclusively towards this kind of aquatic habitat.

Species that are dependent upon vernal pools are known as "obligate vernal pool breeders." In New Jersey there are seven species - two frogs and five salamanders - that fit this category. Another 14 of New Jersey's amphibians also use vernal pools for breeding, but unlike the 'obligate' species, these species can successfully reproduce in habitats that contain fish. These species are known as "facultative vernal pool breeders."

Wow! Vernal pools play such an amazing important ephemeral role in keeping our Northern New Jersey Woodland Eco-system healthy and happy! Keep an ear out for the amphibian choruses of spring evenings – when you hear frogs calling, you’ll know that a vernal pool is to thank!