| Community Watershed Partnerships |  |  | | Students get an introduction to prairie ecology on our fall walking tour. Cleveland students planted Ames Lake Prairie in 1997. |
Cleveland Junior High School currently has two student centered community environmental partnerships These include: Our founding partnership of ten years, the Ames Lake Project -restoring the Phalen Lake neighborhood wetlands; The Valley Branch Environmental Center- environmental student research with the St. Paul Public Schools Environmental Center. Cleveland Junior High School has discovered and developed an effective, cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, community-based partnership design, which has stimulated local and regional agencies to base their future plans on the success of this model. We have expanded the model into different grade levels, disciplines, themes and partnerships. Other initiatives include developing a curriculum design of partnerships that could be replicated nationally. Our partnerships have become a voice for the community with a positive impact on everyone involved.Our first partnership began in 1997 with Ms. Susan Fourniea, Science Instructor, Jeff Thune, Social Studies Instructor, and Randee Edmundson, Science Instructor. Now our partnerships have grown to include more than 10 faculty and staff at Cleveland Junior High School. In additon, we have developed ongoing relationships with specialists from the environmental biology, and technology that teach our students at Cleveland. We have been called on for help to restore our neighborhood wetland waters and plants by St. Paul Park and Recreation, Ramsey/Washington County Metro Watershed District, the Department of Natural Resources, District 2 City Council, and Friends of Swede Hollow.Our service  | | Students from Cleveland Quality Middle School plant native prairie plants to restore the Ames Lake watershed in the spring of 2000. |
includes regular clean-ups through the DNR Adopt a River program, cataloging the prairie plants, macroinvertebrates, and water quality data at Ames Lake for Park and Recreation, plantings at Ames and Phalen Lake with the watershed district, removal of exotic species at Swede Hollow Park, telling the history of our neighborhood wetlands and the efforts to restore these areas in an I-Movie format, website format and powerpoint formats.OUR MISSION OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCES (outcomes):“reflects original intentions of Randee Edmundson, Jeff Theune and Susan Fourniea (‘96).”The basic outcomes always intended a change in the relationships among those who are in or related to the school settings – and the ways they can effectively interact with the environment (both neighborhood and nature). This involves integration, and the pooling of thinking and resources of our adults and students, with the community that surrounds us. It implies collaborative support and exchange among teachers, students, and community representatives.This change in relationships can be characterized as: Diversity among ethnic and socio-economic groups; Communication Skills between people of diverse ages and backgrounds; a Civics Lesson regarding the ways community groups can work together; Environmental Preservation, as it affects both the ecology and the people who depend on it; a lesson in Scientific Research, and the Observational Skills it involves; or a Combination of the Above. The original partnership and two others evolved from our INTENDED OUTCOMES.Visit each partnership site to see what we do!
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