Students engage with environment at Watershed Festival
The seventh-grade class presented research and students celebrated our local watershed at this year's Watershed Festival.
The Niles Bolton Middle School was full of excitement and wonder on Friday, May 3, as students celebrated the Betty’s Creek Watershed.
The annual Watershed Festival is a culmination of the seventh grade's year-long capstone projects in Mr. Johnathan BySura’s science class. Throughout the day, members of the Class of 2024 gave presentations about their projects, which ranged from water quality testing to bees. Each project involved original student research and a service component. Some of the service projects included installing reflective stickers on the school windows to protect birds from colliding into them, creating QR code labels for trees on campus, refurbishing a model of the watershed, and working with Upper School ESP Director Woody Malot on a bee study.
There were also guest teachers on site from several local organizations. Heidi Hall and her team from the Orianne Society had several snakes and turtles on display. Jason Love from UGA/Coweeta taught students the art of birdwatching, and Jason Meadors with Mainspring Conservation ran a fish class at the creek. Lower School classes enjoyed participating in the festival activities with guest teachers and also were able to explore the creek and hear original books read by our seventh-graders.
This year’s Watershed Festival was a special one, as plans for an outdoor classroom to be built at the Middle School for next year were announced. The new outdoor classroom will be a hub for hands-on learning, with indoor and outdoor space for the variety of environmental science projects, like those presented during the Watershed Festival, which continues to grow on the Middle School campus.
Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School
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Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School is a private, coeducational day and boarding school for grades Pre-K through 12. Centrally located between Atlanta, GA, Greenville, SC, and Asheville, NC, we prepare young people for college, career, and a lifetime of leadership and service.
