- Tim Breen, Ph.D., Head of School
One evening last week, I came home and Julie, my wife, was reading the blue Colorado voter guide. She asked, “What should I do about the wolf proposition?” I said, “Well, you could take our Wolf Pack class.” While I knew the Wolf Pack class was diving into the ballot question, I also knew Julie couldn’t enroll! Then we thought: maybe the students could hold a voter information session. When I went to talk with Pete (the teacher) the next morning he told me they were already planning to do that. (Of course they were — our educators are incredibly talented at making education real for our students!)
What a great example of real-world learning at Watershed. Students in this class are learning about ecology, animal behavior, and the balance of economic and wildlife policies. And they’re doing work that makes a difference beyond the walls of the school. They will create a voter’s guide for Prop 114 as a companion to their big event, a Town Hall to inform voters of the pros, cons and consequences of wolf reintroduction in Colorado through the lenses of different constituencies: ranchers, ecologists, farmers, hunters, outdoor recreationalists, and Colorado Parks & Wildlife officers (Town Hall date and time TBD). They are also looking at the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction of 1995 as a case study in order to propose different sites in Colorado should wolf reintroduction pass. Their goal is to propose 6-8 possible sites to Colorado Parks and Wildlife as they create a plan for wolf reintroduction in 2023.
Along the way they are also studying the dynamics of wolf pack mentality and sociology as an avenue to explore how humans (and middle schoolers — themselves!) form identities in a group and accentuate different facets of their identities in different settings and groups.
Once again I am reminded: our students are lucky.
