 The Portland Water District has an extensive education program to teach students the importance of protecting and preserving our vital water resources. They recently hired two new environmental educators, and Brian Knoblock talked with Meg Rounds about the educational resources the district has to offer. Meg, tell me what an environmental educator does. An environmental educator does a lot of different things. We will go out into the classrooms and teach monthly lessons. Karina and myself both have our own set schools where we teach our lessons, and we will go out teach lessons to the same students every month for about seven months. And in addition to that, we run a little Lake Steward story time here at the Ecology Center. We do that once a month, roughly around the second or third Friday of each month. We are on planning committees for water festivals and events. We put on water events over the course of the school year for students and for children and families in the community. So those seven months, is there sort of a set curriculum, a progression of classes? There is. We have a curriculum. I printed it out for you, and that curriculum just shows that all of our lessons kind of build on the previous one. So at the end of the seven months, the students walk away with very solid background and source protection, how water works in our world. And what do the lessons look like? Are they hands-on experiments or what are they? A lot of labs, hands-on activities, games. The students have a very short period of time where they are actually listening to me teach, and a lot of self-investigation. So they will actually manipulate water, manipulate materials, and learn on their own over the course of doing research in a lesson. So what kind of classes and sessions do you have here at the Ecology Center? We do the Little Lake Stewart Storytime. It is directed for three to six-year-olds, and we read stories, do crafts, play games, educational activities, and we also provide a really awesome snack. And what kind of background and training do you have to do this sort of work? I am an educator. I went to Keen State College for secondary education, and then I had two years experience working at a small K through 8 school in Dumberston, Vermont. I moved up here about a year and a half ago, and I started my employment here. And why does the water district hold these classes? What's the purpose behind them? We have these classes because we really care about keeping Tobago Lake clean. It's our drinking water resource for much of southern Maine, and we hold the quality of the water to a very high standard. So as long as the people in the community are aware of how important this water source is, we believe that they'll continue respecting it the same way that we do. So we hope that by reaching out to 4 through 6 graders that that sense of belonging, that sense of this lake belongs to me, I need to take care of it. We'll stay with them throughout their entire lives. Environmental educator Carina Brown demonstrated one of the lessons they teach the students. One of the lessons that we do is with watersheds, and that's the lesson we'll be doing in November. So when we talk about watersheds with the students, we say it's defined by an area and the boundaries are high points in the land, such as mountain ridges. So what we do is we have a piece of tinfoil set up and it's in the shape of kind of like a simple mountain. So we have the students draw on the edges of it in two separate colors right on the edge of this boundary. Because what we ask them to do is to rain on the mountain so they can see how water falls on land and we'll either go into onto one side of this divide or the other. And then the water base marker that's on the mountain edges really shows you which way the rain is falling. So on the blue side the water has fallen down and it's very clear because of the water base marker. And then on the other side we've got the red, what we would say the red watershed or the blue watershed. So they get to manipulate water and how it would fall over land in this lesson. So we also bring maps in for the students so they can really see the Casco Bay watershed, which is what our kind of focus on is this Casco Bay and the Sabago Lake watershed. We bring these overlays that really define the boundaries of the Casco Bay watershed. And then we also bring one for the Sabago Lake watershed, which being the Portland Water District is our big focus. Karina, what's the best part about working with the children? Probably the best part about working with the students is seeing their intuition click in when you teach them something new that they haven't looked at in this way and then they start asking you questions. Like you didn't really think that they would look at it this way and you see their minds saying, wow, I've never thought about water in this way and how I can impact water. Do you think that the lessons that you have really helped them understand the water system better? I feel like we give them a nice broad overview and then I think it's something that's going to last with them because they've really invested in this. They're really getting their hands in there, they're getting dirty, they're getting wet, they're having fun, they're taking stuff home. I know students who have gone home and told their parents all about what they learned that day. So it's not like they walk out of that classroom and just forget everything we just did.