SCA Massachusetts

Read about what is going on at SCA Massachusetts this winter.

(Ashfield, MA, February 1)- Kindergarten thru sixth grade students at Sanderson Academy will be experiencing a variety of winter activities this Friday. AmeriCorps members from the SCA Massachusetts program in Hawley will take the students outside to explore their local environment in winter.

Students will be split into small groups and will rotate through a variety of stations, including animals in winter, tracking, and snow shelters. They will have the opportunity to play a variety of active winter games and learn about physics concepts with tubes from Berkshire East. Corps members will eat lunch with the students and entertain them with a skit about animals in winter and related songs.

This is the fourth year of the Sanderson Winter Enrichment event. Kare Marshall, Math Interventionist at Sanderson Academy, said that she loves the positive energy the corps members bring to the event each year and notes that they are always “educationally flexible” with last minute schedule changes due to weather. The purpose of this event is for the students to be active and enjoy the outdoors during winter in Massachusetts.

On November 19, the seventeen AmeriCorps members of SCA Massachusetts went to the Abbott School in Florida, MA, to teach environmental education and help with school service projects.

The corps members worked with students from preschool to eighth grade. To help the students think about the upcoming holiday, the younger students had the opportunity to dress up like a turkey, sample fall foods that come from plants, act out a story, and create drawings of the things for which they are thankful. Fourth and fifth grade students worked with corps members to put the school garden to bed for winter, covering it with straw. Sixth through eighth grade students built a compost bin and raised garden beds for future school gardening.

In Jasmine Jone’s endeavors to travel across the nation, expanding on environmental protection efforts and contributing her acquired skills to the sustainable industries, the search for the launch of her career has brought Jasmine to the SCA. During her undergraduate years, she was active in many professional science organizations and various non-science leadership positions, mentoring programs, research in plant sciences, ecological surveys, and stewardship projects. She also designed and instructed entomology curriculum for a field based ecology program newly implemented in February of 2012 at her University. As an Army Corps Visitor Use Survey SCA intern and contributor to the conservation projects conducted by her crew throughout the summer of 2012, she had hoped to acquire new skills, expand her network, disseminate awareness, and add to the productivity of their efforts. With these objectives in mind, Jasmine developed a new technological skill using a handheld data point collector unit participating in a GIS project, learned new natural pest management skills at a local community garden, and throughout the rest of the team’s trail restoration and carpentry projects experience field work. Now as a 10 month member the SCA Massachusetts Corps, Jasmine has continued to further extend her quest for environment enrichment through environmental education once again and further conservation efforts through trail work.

Maya Randolph is a political science and psychology double major at Wellesley College. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA where she learned a love of the outdoors through city parks. Last January, Maya spent a month volunteering on an organic farm in Greece. This past summer she led a community trail crew of high school aged students doing trail work in her hometown. She enjoys the entire education process and eventually wants to become a professor. Maya also loves sports, the outdoors, being a camp counselor and community advocacy work. She is excited to embark on this environmental education adventure with the other corps members and the children in the surrounding towns.

John E. Aldridge’s hometown is a little mountain community near Rocky Mountain National Park. He is currently taking online classes via Oregon State University, where his major is Forest Ecosystems and Society, with a minor in Natural Resources Management and Policy. He is also a recent graduate from Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, CO. There, he earned his Associate's of Applied Science degree in Forestry, Wildlife, and Natural Resources, and had a lot of fun tracking mountain lions, catching fish, and playing many outdoor games. His favorite hobbies include snowshoeing, painting, and singing. As a teacher’s assistant at his alma mater, he completed various tasks in the Natural and Environmental Sciences department, and had the opportunity to supervise the training of safe chainsaw usage. Finally, he worked in aquariums for many years at PetSmart, where he sold fish, provided information for healthy fish tanks, and promoted enthusiasm for responsible pet-keeping in his community. He is very much looking forward to working with teachers and students during the next several months!

After graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a Bachelors Degree in Wildlife Conservation, Ryan Pennesi is excited to be an environmental educator and crew leader with the SCA Massachusetts Forests and Parks Americorps program this year. Ryan grew up in Central Massachusetts, where he discovered his passion for nature and all wild things. During the past summer he worked as a residential crew leader for the Vermont Youth Conservation Corps and lived in the Green Mountains of Vermont for 7 weeks! In addition to trail work, Ryan has worked as a Tour Guide, Animal Handler, and Presenter for Animal Adventures Exotic Zoo and Rescue Center. He has had the opportunity to wrestle American Alligators, feed baby Coatis, scratch behind the ears of a Canadian Lynx, and play with Ring-tail Lemurs! Ryan is passionate about animals and would love to share stories about his experience as a zoo employee. On a typical day you may find Ryan exploring the forest, playing soccer, throwing the disk with friends, or playing some jazz on his trumpet.

Alex Nawrot is a New Jersey native who recently graduated from Boston University with a degree in Environmental Science. She has worked as a children's program coordinator at Rutgers University's Botanical Garden where she organized a community vegetable garden for local urban youth groups. She also spent a summer as a research assistant at an agricultural research farm specializing in pepper and tomato hybrids. Her current interests include water resource management and bio-remediation. Alex plans on attending graduate school and continuing her education in water diplomacy.

Brooke Mueller is from Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. She recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire with a comprehensive major in Ecology and Environmental Biology. She has taken many classes to learn about plants, involving identifying, understanding their distribution, and their anatomy. Over the course of the summer she had an internship at the Cape Cod National Sea Shore as a coastal forest monitoring intern. She has also enjoyed the classes she has taken classes in the physiology of birds and mammals. The section on birds was most interesting to her and she has since taken a class on and has done her own birding. All of the classes she has taken involving biology and dealing with the environment have fed her excitement of the outdoors. Every since she was little, she has loved being outside and has found enjoyment in sharing that feeling with others.