The Beautiful Killer . . .

Background Check

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources as well as other departments of natural resources across the United States and Canada describe lythrum salicaria -- a.k.a. purple loosestrife -- as one of the most deadly and invasive plants in North America.

“It’s is deadly because it slowly takes over wetland areas. It is like that green stuff in Stephen King’s movie Creepshow that totally takes over a town,” explains high school senior Sara Rehsling. “If we don’t do something to stop it, we will see it killing off frogs, turtles, ducks, and a lot of other wildlife. It totally wipes out the diversity of biosystems and alters the make-up of habitats.” [Key Idea 9: Motivation]

Rehsling talks like an environmental expert because she is, albeit an eighteen year old one. She is just one of many students at rural West High School in Noble, Indiana that is part of a unique high school program known as America’s Most Unwanted.

Students, teachers, and community members in this manufacturing and farming community have been working to rein in loosestrife populations since first discovering the existence of the plant in 2005. What started as a simple biology project has turned into community endeavor that is having a lasting impact on the environment and on the students at West High School. [Key Idea 10: Project-based and Social Action Learning]

Students spawn the investigation [Key Idea 6: Constructivism]

“I had no idea when I picked the flower up off the ground and stuck it behind my ear, that it would lead to anything like this,” reflects Rehsling who is an original member of America’s Most Unwanted and recently accepted a full-ride environmental science scholarship to Purdue University. “I was never really excited about science until I learned that it is a lot more than just wearing embarrassing goggles and heating up beakers! Mr. Jones and Ms. Tucker have helped me discover that science is really important to my town and my future.”

“It’s the students who have gotten behind this cause and made the difference,” shares biology teacher Brian Jones. “With the help of our media specialist Meg Tucker [Principle 3], we have been able to engage in a real world learning experience. These kids are putting scientific investigation to use in this community, and it is making a difference in so many ways.”[Key Idea 7: Inquiry]

It all started as a walk through the school woods in August 2005. A group of freshman biology students were on a mission to photograph and identify plant life growing in and around a section of the woods near the school.[Key Idea 1: Assignment] “My team was supposed to take pictures of anything with a bloom,” recalls Rehsling. “The loosestrife flower has a really pretty purple color. We could see it when we stepped into a clearing overlooking the pond by the edge of the school. There was a lot of it.”

Media Specialist implicated

The real adventure started the next day when the biology students worked with media specialist Meg Tucker to identify the plants they had photographed. [Principle 5] Tucker made available a collection of resources including webpages, books, local experts, sound files, and photocollections. Her media center is equipped with a host of resources that allow students to research information in a way that accommodates individual learning styles and dispositions. [Principle 7]

“I had never heard of loosestrife,” recollects Tucker, “but once we saw the picture of it on the Department of Natural Resources website, we recognized it. We still didn’t really understand much about it at the time, but since it was called ‘deadly’ the students were interested. So I contacted the local extension office and asked them if someone there would be interested in coming to talk to us.”[Principle 4]

Web ring unfolds [Key Idea 4: Cognitive Apprenticeship]

The next week agent Dave Deegin from the extension office met with Jones, Tucker, Rehsling, and a few other students and made an interesting proposal. [Key Idea 8: Interview]

“I had recently been in touch with a colleague in Wisconsin who was developing a community awareness plan for purple loosetrife,” recalls Deegin. “Since these teachers and kids seemed so interested in the environment, I wondered if they might be willing to work with me to study loosestrife and the ideas from Wisconsin’s DNR.”

“That is when things took off,” remembers Jones. “Meg [Tucker] worked with the DNR to set up a collaborative space on the web using Googlesites.com. [Principle 9] We were put in virtual contact with Brock Woodshire and his team in Madison, Wisconsin.” [Principle 4]

Enough collaboration to call it a crime [Key Idea 5: Collaboration]

Working with the team of experts, the two educators and their students researched purple loosestrife in depth and formed the America’s Most Unwanted club in the school. [Principle 8] They learned how loosestrife has been present in America since being carried over on the ballasts of shipping vessels in the early 1800’s. It has not been an environmental threat, however, until recent decades as it has become a popular landscaping flower and sold on the open market. Though now there are laws that prohibit its sale, it is a hardy and rapidly spreading plant that can produce millions of seeds each year. It chokes out native species and eventually upsets the ecological balance in wetlands. “We freaked out when we discovered that the seeds have nearly a 100 percent germination rate,” recalls Rehsling. “We wanted to know what could be done to stop this plant.”[Principle 6]

Revealing information posted on popular social network site

Rehsling and her friends enthusiastically embraced this project and pulled many more students and community members into it with the help of Facebook.com. “We built a webpage on Facebook to keep track of our progress and keep people informed,” says Rehsling. Their site now boasts over 500 hundred members and over 100 active members.

The commitment of the students and educators earned them an opportunity to participate in an experimental control effort that involved introducing leaf-eating Galerucella beetles. “Our research showed that both Canada and Wisconsin had success with the beetles,” says Tucker. “When we discovered a research study on Purdue’s website looking for participants, we decided to apply. They accepted us, and we were able to release the beetles in May of 2006.”

Galerucella calmariensis

Leaf-eating beetle

http://www.entomology.wisc.edu/mbcn/kyf501.html

Full investigation and response plan underway

Under the guidance of Tucker and Jones, the students involved in the America’s Most Unwanted club continue the inquiry into purple loosestrife to this day. They have devised and are carrying out a three phase plan:

Early intervention shows promising results

“At first we thought we could totally get rid of it, but then realized that that is nearly impossible. But if you take a look at the pictures we took in 2005 and compare them to today (see box) you can see that we really are making a difference,” Rehsling says with a broad smile.

Both Jones and Tucker acknowledge that the loosestrife problem is bigger than the America’s Most Unwanted club can defeat, but that does not discourage them or interfere with their plans to expand their efforts to tackle other local environmental issues. [Key Idea 3: Choice]

Authentic learning likely to spread

“Our young people benefit greatly from engaging in authentic learning tasks,” states Tucker. [Key Idea 2: Authentic Learning] “This project has challenged students to dig for understanding and apply what they learn to their world. They built connections with a variety of adults and got excited about making a difference. Sure we learned a lot about loosestrife and how to manage it, but more importantly the students learned about the joys of tackling a problem, working together, and contributing to their community.” [Principle 10]

Tucker sites the work of Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi as having a major impact on the philosophy behind the work she collaborates with teachers on. " He [Czikszentmihalyi] spells out the relationship between challenge and ability. If the challenge of the task is balanced by the ability of the student, then students enter a state of mind called flow where optimum learning can occur," explains Tucker. "You can recognize when students are in this state by their enthusiasm and intrinsic motivation. The America's Most Unwanted project is a great example of designing curriculum in a way that a variety of students can be challenged at variety of levels."

Tucker continues, "Another set of authors that has personally helped me in the design of this type of projects is Violet Harada and Joan Yoshina. They authored a book specifically aimed at building collaborative relationships between media specialists and teachers. Our America's Most Unwanted project hits on all four elements that they list as being part of effective inquiry: learning is inspired by students, real-world problems shape the curriculum, big questions drive the projects, and learning extends beyond the school."

Though none are to the scale of America’s Most Unwanted, the West High School curriculum has multiple project-based learning projects in all curricular areas that combine state standards with information literacy standards. [Principle 1] “We have been working on project-based learning for years,” explains Tucker, “this is just one of several that seemed to catch on fire. It has been a wonderful example of how student apathy disappears if there is a worthy task set before them. We have been examining all our curricular areas to see other ways we can make meaningful connections between our curriculum and our students.” [Principle 2]

Both Tucker and Jones admit what another one of their mentors -- Phil Schlechty -- concluded nearly two decades ago. He writes ". . . getting students engaged in ways that produce profound understanding takes more time and is more difficult than is the case if one is will to settle for superficial coverage." Both teachers, however, feel that the time is well worth it. Sara Rehsling could not agree more and credits her dedicated teachers for helping her discover her direction for the future.

More important than gaining ground on an environmental pest, this rural school and this team of forward thinking teachers are leading the way on the eradication of what authors Wiggins and McTighe call superficial coverage and meaningless activities. These are the deadliest of pests that are choking out authentic learning at alarming rates in our schools.

Sources

Czikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Collins, 1991.

Harada, Violet and Joan Yoshina. Inquiry Learning through Librarian-Teacher Partnerships. Ohio: Linworth Publishing, 2004.

Schlechty, Phillip. Working on the Work. California: Jossey-Bass, 2002.

McTighe, Jay and Grant Wiggins. Understanding by Design. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 2005.

Note: The contents of this article are fictional. It was created to meet the requirements of a graduate course for Dr. Annette Lamb. Names are fabricated. Locations do not exist.

The hopes and dreams, however, are real and sustain the author on a daily basis.

Submitted by Joe Pounds