'Journey' to fly for science teachers

Sisters' record-setting monarch butterfly, Journey, will fly again, this time in front of more than 200 of Oregon's best science teachers at the their annual meeting in Newport in early October.

When Jim and Sue Anderson showed their good friend Lori Lancaster a copy of the book "Journey's Flight" and told her some of the backstory, she wanted to have that story shared with the dedicated teachers who attend Oregon Science Teachers Association annual meeting.

"This project is an excellent example of Oregon's new science curriculum, project-based learning, in action," said Lancaster, who is Oregon Science Teachers Association communications director.

She called author Jean Nave and asked her if she would make a presentation at the October meeting. Nave agreed.

Nave will be the opening keynote speaker telling Journey's story, and teacher Susie Werts will facilitate a workshop helping teachers learn how they can develop their own project-based learning experience in their school. Project-based learning is a dynamic classroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges and acquire a deeper knowledge skill by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge.

"I'll remember forever the day we received notice that Journey, one of the two monarch butterflies we raised, tagged and released at Sisters Middle School, was located and photographed in Southern California," said Werts. "It was a one-in-a-million chance that he would succeed in migrating that long distance, but he did it. The students were thrilled, and I thought that we had to expand upon this moment to help students understand the impact of what they'd done - creating a way-station, hosting assemblies with guest speakers, and rearing caterpillars, two of which emerged successfully as adult monarchs."

The "expansion" Werts did with her students included developing and publishing the first book to describe the arduous journey a migrating monarch butterfly goes through. The students developed the story ideas based upon all they had learned about monarch butterflies. Then author Nave wrote each story as a chapter in the book. Professor David James of Washington State University read each chapter to ensure the facts were correct. The final product, "Journey's Flight," which also included numerous articles by butterfly experts, was published in September 2017 and is for sale on Amazon.com and at Paulina Springs Books in Sisters.

Thanks to numerous blog posts by the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Wildlife Federation, hundreds of copies of the book have sold. They have already had a noteable effect. One of Werts' students made a presentation to Sisters City Council, asking that they dedicate a park to butterflies and other pollinators. That park is now in the works.