RTPI Staff Blog

The Roger Tory Peterson Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo's new on-line resource for a greener, more sustainable Western New York: www.growwny.org. We're also pleased to announce that CFGB has awarded a grant to RTPI to provide the website with information on great places to go to enjoy and learn about our natural environment. We are doing this project in partnership with the Penn Dixie Paleontological and Outdoor Education Center in Hamburg, NY. It's a great opportunity for us both to advance our nature education mission and network with dozens of outdoor education providers throughout WNY.

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Lakes and Their Watersheds: An Introduction to Lakes, Lake Ecology, and Lake Management, taught by Dr. Thomas Erlandson, is a non-credit course offered during the 2010 Spring Semester by the Center for Continuing Education at Jamestown Community College.

The eight-week course focuses on lakes and lake issues in Chautauqua County, New York, with sessions taught on Wednesday evenings, March 3 to April 28, 6-9 PM, in the Carnahan Building on the JCC Jamestown Campus. 

Everyone is invited to attend a free overview of the course on Wednesday, February 17, 7-9 PM at the Carnahan Theater. For more information call 716-338-1005. 

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RTPI and Highlights Foundation team up to provide writers and illustrators (including aspiring writers and illustrators) with a unique opportunity to learn the craft of nature writing for children from experts in the field. Sign up now for Writing from Nature: Blazing a Path from Field Journal to Publication, April 21 - 25, 2010, at the Highlights Foundation's beautiful retreat setting in Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania. See you there!

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The Prairie Wetlands Learning Center in Fergus Falls, Minnesota is one of our favorite places for environmental education and a great example of what we're working to accomplish across the country. In the summer of 2008 I introduced the staff there to techniques for teaching others to keep nature journals. Now look what they're doing!

Nature Journaling Workshops

Winter:  Thursday, January 28, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Spring:  Thursday, April 15, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

Summer:  Wednesday and Thursday, June 23-24, 8:00 am – 4:30 pm daily

Fall:  Wednesday November 10, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm

People from all walks of life are joining together to share in the benefits and enjoyment of nature journaling:  preK-12th grade teachers, environmental educators, landowners, artists, conservationists, birders, anyone interested in observing nature, recording discoveries, and sharing them with others or teaching others how to journal.  This workshop is about learning how to see. You will be introduced to a set of easy-to-learn and easy-to-teach techniques that will help you become more a competent observer of the objects, places, and occurrences you encounter daily. Making and recording accurate observations are among the most basic skills connected to scientific inquiry and writing. Be prepared to spend time outside in the prairie.  Keep coming back to keep yourself on track if desired - share your journaling discoveries when you return each season. Bring your own notebook or journal, lunch, beverage, and snacks.  Cost:  FREE!  Dormitory accommodations are available on-site for $20 per night if needed in summer.  Instructors:  Dave Ellis and Molly Stoddard, PWLC Instructional Systems Specialists. 

 

 

Stay tuned for our next issue of Teaching Nature, which features the Prairie Science Classroom, a fantastic program at PWLC that teaches elementary students their required subjects and how to know and appreciate their local ecosystem. Way to go PWLC! 

 

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The education program we designed to accompany our current exhibition, Mapping the Birds of New York, continues to enthrall school children who come to visit. It's nice to get notes back from the kids, who not only thank us for the fun they had but also show us what they learned. Here's one from a student at Love Elementary School in Jamestown:

Dear Mr. Baldwin, Miss Nelson, and Mr. Sherman,

Thank you for the tour of RTPI (Roger Tory Peterson Institute). I liked it. Especially the activity that Mr. Sherman did, the scavenger hunt. Also when we watched the birds with the binoculars. I actually liked all the activities. Now I know names of birds, habitats, and much more.

Your nice friend,

Ezequiel Carrea

 

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In an earlier post I passed along some information that gave us a glimpse into the life of little-known Blanche Hornbeck, the remarkable teacher who ignited Roger Tory Peterson's passion for birds when he was a student in her seventh-grade science class at Washington Junior High School in Jamestown, New York. Her record of employment, in the Jamestown Public School files, noted her place of birth: Hartstown, Pennsylvania.

I stopped briefly in Hartstown the other day. It really is not much more than a crossroads:

But there is a post office:

and a small cemetery:

Unfortunately I did not find any headstones bearing the name "Hornbeck".

But Hartstown's location is intriguing, surrounded by marshland forming the headwaters of the Shenango River. Not far downstream the river widens into the big Pymatuning Reservoir, astride the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, which once was a huge wetland. Turn-of-the- 2oth-century Hartstown must have been a place teeming with birds and other wildlife.

I wonder if Blanche, as a little girl, would have looked on scenes like this one and developed a love for birds that she wanted to pass along to her students - including a skinny 11-year-old named Roger Peterson?  

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Thirty-six 6th grade students from Jefferson Middle School in Jamestown took a field trip to RTPI today to explore our Mapping the Birds of New York exhibition. Mark and Tina guided them through three learning activities, which are tailor-made for the school curriculum for science, math and social studies.

Students role-played data-collecting citizen scientists and nest site-seeking birds in a changing New York habitat, and went on a habitat hunt through the beautiful artwork on exhibit.

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Much has recently been written, and is being written, about Roger Tory Peterson; in fact, this week we are hosting Laura Jacques, a Connecticut artist assigned to illustrate a new RTP biography for children.

But what about Blanche Hornbeck, the seventh grade science teacher whom RTP credited with igniting his lifelong passion for the world of birds? We don't have much information about her but here's an interesting document, courtesy of Pamela Brown and the archives of Jamestown Public Schools, which evidently employed Miss Hornbeck only for school years starting 1919 and 1920 - just long enough to have that wonderful influence on young Roger Peterson:

The file card shows Miss Hornbeck's date of birth (January 1893), place of birth (Hartstown, a little village in northwestern Pennsylvania), and record of previous employment.

RTP never failed to credit Miss Hornbeck for what she did for him; and when the Roger Tory Peterson Institute was founded it was most assuredly his memory of her mentoring that prompted him to proclaim that RTPI would "teach the teachers."

Miss Hornbeck put into practice the educational philosophy that, "education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire," as William Butler Yeats put it.

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Kids from Jamestown's Fletcher Elementary School, and their parents, enjoyed a Saturday morning of fun and learning as part of RTPI's effort to welcome the community to the fantastic exhibition, Mapping the Birds of New York.

RTPI teacher/naturalist Tina Nelson immersed the students in the exhibit as they role-played scientists, sought out connections between breeding birds and their habitats, and explored the reasons for historic changes in the breeding ranges of birds. All the learning connects to the school curriculum for science, math, and social studies.

Fletcher is the first of several Jamestown elementary schools to sign up to take advantage of RTPI's special Saturday school program, which makes it possible for families to visit us in spite of scarce field trip funds. 

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Mary Gomillion, one of six Blanche Hornbeck Awardees honored this year for outstanding work in nature education, is being heralded by her local (Boerne, Texas) newspaper, the Boerne Star. Check it out!

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