It's the age-old question: can any of us really affect change? What power do we hold to make a difference in the world or even our community? This fall, students in the Upper School Biology CoLab learned they have plenty, as long as they’re willing to try.
The ripple effect began, as they all do, with a single drop. Upper School Science and Biology CoLab teacher Joel Allen was out birding at an abandoned airport field over the summer. The land, which had been unofficially folded into a local farm and tilled into a cornfield, experienced a shift in its biodiversity when pools of water began to collect in the empty crop rows. These pools in turn attracted rare birds during migration season, making it a hot spot for bird enthusiasts like Allen. “One day I was standing next to another birder who said, ‘It’s such a shame they’re going to build over this habitat,’” said Allen. “And I thought ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’”
He presented the challenge to his Biology CoLab: how to save a burgeoning habitat and make room for new enterprises. Thus began a process of discovery, one where Allen was just as much a student as a teacher. The class began by reviewing data and sightings gathered by Allen and others tracking the migratory patterns of the birds. “When I presented the data to the students, I said, ‘We need to figure out how many species are endangered.’ And they said, ‘You mean you don’t already know?’ and I said, ‘I kind of know, but we need to pour into this data together and find the answers.’”
To accurately determine the right balance for a biodiverse habitat, students ran equations that measured the effects different plants might bring to an environment. “The cool thing is that it’s so modular,” says Allen. “Students could come up with a ton of different answers. They had to consider ‘What's my ethos? What do I think is important, and what's the evidence that supports that?’”
The results? Students learned that the right plant combinations in the right places could maintain the same biodiversity in a fifth of the space. An Incredible finding, but it didn’t do any good sitting on a piece of paper. So, Allen put in a call to the local Planning Commissioner.
A few weeks later, the ninth grade CoLab students found themselves at Maryland Heights City Hall, presenting their findings to a panel of legislators. One of the panel members, the students later learned, was the project manager of the construction project threatening the habitat in question, and he heard them loud and clear. “The project manager said, ‘I’m going to take some of your evidence and data back to corporate,’” says Allen. “He wanted to include our ideas in the landscaping plan for the building, to make sure the biodiversity of the area remained.”
But he wasn’t the only one who heard them. Principia School students’ research also inspired the city’s Planning Commissioner to rethink the laws around land stewardship. A few weeks later, Allen got an email from the Commissioner telling him Principia had inspired Maryland Heights to become a “Bee City”—a city that creates safe habitats for pollinators. “It was a great reminder that we, as humans, have the opportunity to be phenomenal stewards and caretakers of this planet,” says Allen. “That we can make a difference if we care enough to take that first step. That’s the great thing about CoLabs. The learning doesn’t stop at the classroom door. We take it into the world, and we teach our students to leave the world a little bit better than they found it.”