School Forest
Highlights About Our School Forests
Becker Big Woods School Forest
Becker Big Woods School Forest is located in St. Michael across the street from St. Michael-Albertville Middle School East. Purchased in 2006 by the City of St. Michael with help from a DNR grant, the School Forest consists of 38.5 acres of old growth maple-basswood forest. The Becker Big Woods is special because it represents what St. Michael looked like before its conversion to agriculture. Many teachers use the forest throughout the school year. Activities include geocaching, movie-making, plant and animal identification, animal tracking, drawing, tapping maple trees, and tree measurement. More and more teachers use the woods each year. Staff and natural resource professionals from the St. Michael area have helped teachers deliver a community-based, interdisciplinary approach to learning about St. Michael's history.
Oneka-Hugo School Forest
The 25-acre Oneka-Hugo School Forest is located next to Oneka Elementary. Containing wetlands, old fields, and a few trees, this area was recently converted from agriculture. Thousands of homes and townhomes built in the last two decades surround the school, and many students traverse the School Forest via paved bike trail and boardwalk to attend class. With help from the DNR's Taking Action Opportunities (TAO) program, 5th grade teacher and site coordinator Abbi Case was able to install two trail cameras. Today, students are learning about the animals that tend to avoid noisy classes of students: the shy fox, elusive opossums, and sneaky raccoons. Abbi uses the TAO curriculum, developed by DNR and the U of MN's Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve staff, to help guide students' learning about what they find. Part of their learning includes creating recommendations to improve habitat for even more wildlife sightings. One student said: "I can't believe how many animals live in our schoolyard that we never see!"
Last fall, site coordinator Nancy Jacobson worked with Jeff Wiersma, a Glendalough State Park staff manager, several parents, and interested students to construct a geocache course in the Frazee School Forest. Together, they hid geocache containers along the trails in the School Forest and recorded the GPS coordinates (waypoints) at each location. Each cache consisted of a plastic coffee can filled with a logbook, pencil, a "Take something Leave something" sign, and trinkets such as a miniature nature journal, book related to nature, and bookmark. Nancy then created laminated cards with the waypoints for each stash, taught students how to use the GPS units, and sent paired students into the forest to find the caches. Nancy had received a gift of money from the Frazee-Vergas Elementary Fund Raiser and the Frazee Thrift Shop to purchase 13 Garmin eTrex10's for the school. Students will look for more hiding places to use as caches soon. Geo-caching is an activity that is growing state and nationwide. The idea of treasure hunting and using tech-gadgets began in the year 2000 and continues to grow by leaps and bounds!
Proctor Middle School Forest consists of .95 acres on the A.I. Jedlicka Middle School property. The steep sided banks leading to a ravine on this site hold a good diversity of trees and shrubs, and provide a good workout for students! Leah Moore, site coordinator, is excited to be using this site weekly with her science class and get other teachers involved in using it for other subjects. While the teachers are excited to have this easily accessible site that is truly right outside their door, they also plan to use the larger and soon-to-be created Proctor High School Forest across the street. The addition of the Proctor Middle School Forest is a nice compliment to the two Elementary School Forests already in the district. Now all Proctor students will continue their outdoor education after 5th grade.