Teacher Betsy Leeker’s fifth grade students spread out among a thick clutch of tall plants at Wohlwend Elementary School in Oakville. They’re engaged in an activity called “pocket world.”
“They might find a small bug or a leaf to overturn, sometimes a rock, and they're just going to record all the information in their nature journal,” Leeker said.
The students are roaming around a newly established feature at their school: a grassland prairie. After years of planting and restoration work, this ecosystem is now in full bloom, humming with the sound of insects and laughter from the class.
Before the start of this project, the community had a name for this area — “Lake Wohlwend.”
“This was a couple acres of turf grass so it would flood constantly, every time it would rain,” said Mehlville School District's head groundskeeper Gerry Spitznagel.
Seeing an opportunity for something better, Spitznagel applied for community conservation grants from the Missouri Department of Conservation and received two totaling $35,000.
The school is located about a half-mile from the Mississippi River, which Spitznagel said was a selling point for the grant application.
“We are on a migration path for insects and for birds,” he said. “This was going to be a great way to bring all of that down to the students so that they could observe it.”
The process of converting the land was extensive. First, the department recommended herbicide to kill the plants that were there. Then, they planted a cover crop of beets, turnips and barley to enrich the soil. Now, the field hosts about 80 different types of plants, including goldenrod, brown-eyed Susans, asters and cup plants.
At first, Spitznagel said neighbors were confused by what looked like a weedy, out-of-control field.
“I kept trying to put out in the ethers there that it was going to be a three-year process before anybody was going to say, ‘That looks really nice,'” Spitznagel said. “So it's been a little bit of a process with the community. This year, we've heard nothing but positive feedback from everybody.”
On top of the public buy-in, Spitznagel said the flooding has also subdued thanks to the long roots of the prairie plants.
“It does flood still, but it goes away a lot faster than it used to,” he added.
A focus on nature has grown alongside the prairie at this elementary school. Leeker is a co-sponsor of the school’s conservation club.
“We have so many more animals and things to see now that we have these native grasses,” Leeker said. “It's just a really great way for kids to get out and see the nature that's native to where we live.”
The conservation club works to eradicate invasive plants from the grounds and helps put up nests for bluebirds.
“Humans are creating gasses and also, Earth is changing as well, so we have to make sure that whatever the Earth does, we're going to have to make sure our plants and wildlife stays healthy no matter what happens next,” said fifth grade student and club member Sam Franzi.
For the pocket world assignment, Franzi flipped over a brick and found the top of an ant’s nest.
Nearby, student Vanessa Wilson found something else.
“It feels like one of those spiky things you get at an arcade,” Wilson speculated. “I think it's like a mutated dandelion or something.”
It seems she was right; the flower she found looked like a coneflower, a native plant that is in the same family as dandelions.
In this prairie, Leeker hopes her students will learn to identify even more of the biodiversity in their backyards.
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