The Fire Ecology class in Durango was fantastic!!  I will never look at another stand of trees or forested area with the same mind set.  I was someone who wondered why fires were left to just burn.  Fires should be put out.  As I sat listening and learning about our forests and what has happened since the fires of 1910 I began to understand.  As the week progressed, not only did things begin to make more sense but I began to feel a sense of responsibility to pass on this information to those generations coming up.  There is much more to forest management than I ever imagined!

The presentation by John Ey about his erosion prevention at the Lemon Dam was incredible.  I lived in Durango during the Missionary Ridge fire and I remember the rain and horrible mud slides that happened both in the valley and at Vallecito Lake.  I had no idea what was being done at Lemon.  What a great demonstration of knowledge of and dedication to his job. 

I really enjoyed the dendrochronology presentation.  That is something I have always been interested in and will definitely be a subject I will fit into my curriculum!!  It will go along with our plants unit as well as social studies.  It would also have been fun to do some of the activities in the PLT activity guide each day rather than only on the last day.  Each one of the field trips presented a new insight into fire ecology.  It was amazing see what the burned areas looked like several years after the fires.  I did not know how important fire was to many plants in their reproductive cycles.

I will be using the PLT activity guide a lot.  As I started through it, looking at the focus of the lessons, I suddenly realized that they would go with most of the curriculum I teach.  I’ve made a list of the units and areas of study that I teach in science, social studies, literature and math.  Under each heading, as I go through the guide, I am listing the lesson number of the activity that can be used with it.  I can even use parts of some of the lessons for K-3 even though I teach 5^th grade.  I absolutely love the literature connections.  I already read to my class some of the suggested books.

Another activity that I “sort of” did in my classroom, but didn’t have good guide lines for, was the science notebook.  They can definitely be a great learning tool for the students, when done right.  With the additional information on how to organize the notebook, hopefully, this next years work will be better.

My own notebook is also growing daily.  With all the information from the class and things I am adding to it, it will also be a great resource. I really enjoyed the Fire Ecology class and learned more than I ever anticipated.  I am really excited to add this to my classroom teaching.