Sisters teacher honored for science program

Cheryl Butler, seventh-grade science teacher, was selected as Oregon's runner-up for the 1998 Conservation Teacher of the Year Award. The award is sponsored by the National Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

Butler's program involves students in the betterment of local soil, water, and related resources.

Butler has developed three hands-on field projects, all of which are on-going. One project is a 1/4-mile nature trail; another is the Sisters Middle School landscape project.

The third project is a study of Squaw Creek.

The Squaw Creek study offers the students in grades 5-7 and grades 10 and 12 the opportunity to collect stream data about the health of an important local environmental resource.

"The initial focus of the project is classroom experiments and research relating to water quality," Butler said. "These include plant, animal, and macroinvertebrate identification, the stream's pH, dissolved oxygen, water temperature and rate of flow."

Following this phase of the study, each grade level has a specific area on the creek where they collect data three to four times a year.

Actual data collection at stream sites include determi-nation of the stream's pH, level of dissolved oxygen, rate of flow and animal diversity; plant diversity; identification of native species; and identification by grouping organisms according to feeding groups.

The students have learned that severe bank erosion and the destruction of shade trees results in the elevation of the temperature of the water. In turn, the higher temperature affects the pH and dissolved oxygen levels to a degree that the stream can no longer support its normal plant and animal life.

They also learn that part of the remedy for stream rehabilitation in such areas is the planting of shade trees.

During an earlier study of Indian Ford Creek, students cut 500 12-inch-by-thumb- size segments of willow branches and stored them over the winter.

In the spring, the students rooted the segments, then planted them along the eroded bank - with a 90 percent survival rate.

The final phase of the Squaw Creek project is the students' use of school computer technology to interpret the data, write a scientific report on their findings, and present those findings to their classmates before the reports are presented to the U.S. Forest Service, and to the Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

"These areas of study," Butler said, "not only incorporate science, math, language arts, and technology, but the involvement of different grade levels builds on the school district's science curriculum to meet state standards and benchmark requirements for the CIM (Certificate of Initial Mastery) and CAM (Certificate of Advanced Mastery)."

Butler received her bachelors degree in wildlife biology from Colorado State University, her teacher's certificate, and her masters degree in outdoor Education from Southern Oregon State University.

In her 10th year as a member of the Sisters Middle School teaching staff, she taught sixth-grade students for three years and has been the seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher for the past seven years.

Previously, Butler was a member of the Governor's Task Force for the Development of a Guide for Teaching Environmental Conservation in Watersheds.