SEED Gatherings 2025-26

SEED Gathering at Kaweah Oaks Preserve: Acorns to Aquifers: Designing Future Watersheds 

As you know, SEED Network’s overarching goal is to get more kids learning outside. Since we don’t have as many environmental education providers here as in other parts of the state, we realize that we need to become our own hosts and guides. So, our seasonal SEED Gatherings are in-person events that bring together K-12 teachers, content experts, community partners, and high school students to workshop field trip activities and share lesson resources that other folks can use to design their own trips. 

At our November gathering at Kaweah Oaks Preserve, we explored two lesson plans we began to develop at the SEED Summer Institute to support our Tulare County Climate Literacy Framework: Groundwater Recharge and the Oak Woodland Hike. Check out our agenda and website for detailed workshop descriptions and resource links. 

By discussing groundwater recharge and oak woodland ecology together, we better understood the history of the preserve as well as future plans to protect and restore the range of our native oak trees and all of the biodiversity they shepherd. Recent rains meant we could really see where the groundwater was infiltrating and where the ground had been saturated. We learned that the epic floods of 2023 brought both good and bad - while some oaks and sycamores were wiped out, others emerged stronger than ever. Along with native seeds, the waters also brought in invasives, such as castor beans. These complex challenges are exactly the type of learning that is envisioned by California’s Next Generation Science Standards, and we hope the workshops inspire you to explore them with your students.  

Groundwater Recharge: Designing for the Future of Water 

Inspired by the last SEED Gathering at Dry Creek and Project WET’s Blue River watershed simulation at the SEED Summer Institute, middle school teacher Roxana Flores decided to take a chance with more hands-on activities this year. To build on the SEED Groundwater Recharge Lesson Plan she and her team drafted, she took her Woodville students to visit a nearby water recharge basin and to try soil testing protocols. At the Gathering, she was joined by Sequoia Riverlands Trust’s Sam Weiser in guiding workshop participants through soil sampling and groundwater infiltration activities. In a related workshop, SRT’s Emily Boetter led a design workshop on Multibenefit Land Repurposing Projects (MLRPs), a real-world hot topic in our local water conversations. 

Interest in groundwater management is strong among SEED partners, but it’s also the focus of a  newly-published, free statewide Seeds to Solutions seventh grade curriculum unit: Land Subsidence and Groundwater. This unit explores the question, “Why is the Central Valley sinking, and what can we do about it?” As the successor to the popular EEI (Education and the Environment Initiative) curriculum units, we expect these new resources to stir curiosity among middle school students statewide, and SEED teachers and partners are growing their expertise in teaching about this topic in and outside of the classroom. We hope to host statewide trainings on the unit sometime next year and share some of our students’ ideas on how to address groundwater challenges. 

Acorns in the Classroom 

Originally the brainchild of River Ridge Institute’s Gary Adest, SEED has taken on developing Acorns in the Classroom as a local successor to the Trout in the Classroom program. 

Two local experts and retired College of the Sequoias professors stepped up to help us understand oak woodland ecology. Dr. Robert Urtecho revealed complex ecosystem dynamics by showing us the diversity of critters caught with his Burlese funnel. John Greening wowed us with his collection of oak gall specimens and detailed resources on Oak Galls, Live Oak Apple Galls, and Muffin Galls and Their Ants. 

SRT’s Zach Arnold took us through some of the activities being developed for the SEED Oak Woodland Hike Lesson Plan for grades K-2. The idea is that every primary student should get to start exploring oaks on their school campus or on a walking field trip to a nearby park or grove. SEED hopes to grow the Oak Woodland Scavenger Hunt and Oak Woodland Nature Journal activities into a reproducible booklet that can help teachers do this anywhere. 

Rockstar SEED teacher Charity Wynn of Porterville Unified presented her own pilot work on the Acorns in the Classroom Lesson Resources and her Acorn Dissection Lab. SEED partners helped collect acorns this fall at various spots in the Tule and Kaweah watersheds. Teachers learned how to identify and sort them. Most importantly, Charity shared her amazing teacher hack. When asked how she did the dissection, she said she put some of the non-viable, floating seeds under her document camera and smashed them with her Stanley. For those who don’t know, these are the huge insulated mugs that are a must-have for teachers these days. Her fourth graders went bonkers when they saw two larvae crawling around. Her work exemplifies the spirit of SEED - learning as we go along, and having fun with our local plants and animals in a way that only nature-based learning can provide.