By Vernon Robison
Moapa Valley Progress
The Moapa Valley High School class of 2016, made up of kids who are now seventh graders at Mack Lyon Middle School, carry a special distinction. Their graduation year happens to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service (NPS). As such, this group of students has been chosen, along with students from a handful of other Clark County schools, for a special new NPS program called Graduating Class 2016 Project.
On Tuesday, February 1, Mack Lyon seventh graders were hosted by the Park Service on a special field trip to the Lake Mead National Recreation Area and the Valley of Fire State Park. The trip focused on earth science in coordination with the seventh grade science curriculum. Students got to see, first hand, the evidence of geologic forces working in areas not far from their own homes.
“We started this project last year when the kids were in sixth grade,” said Ellen Anderson, Education Outreach Manager for the National Park Service. “The idea is that, as this class moves up, they will experience something different each year that coordinates with their science focus for that year.”
Last week’s field trip had the class of seventh graders divided up into three groups. Each group visited three different stations throughout the course of the trip.
The first stop was the White Dome area of Valley of Fire State Park. While there the students discussed the unique sandstone formations and how they came to be. They walked a trail through a slot canyon and witnessed firsthand the effects of wind and water erosion on the stone formations.
Unfortunately, the weather that day was blustery cold with high winds. But while this made trip conditions less than ideal, it did provide an additional geological insight.
“The kids got to experience erosion first hand as we got sandblasted at times with the high wind,” said Mack Lyon teacher Ginger Massaro. “They could actually feel those erosive forces working.”
The second stop was at Roger Springs in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. At this natural warm spring, the students took water samples and did temperature measurements on the water. They found that the water measured at a constant of about 80° F. They learned about the source of the water and why it stays at that temperature despite air temperatures.
“It was so windy and cold, and the water was so warm, that some of the kids were tempted to jump in to warm up,” Massaro said.
The third stop was a brief hike up the North Shore Summit Trail at mile marker 21 in the Lake Mead Recreation Area. Students hiked to an overlok to view the various geologic formations in the surrounding area.
“We pointed out the difference between sandstone formations, in the Bowl of Fire area, and the limestone formations of the Muddy Mountains,” said Anderson. “Right there you have vastly different geological features all from that one viewpoint.”
The NPS’ Graduation Class 2016 Project involves students from only six schools in Clark County. Other schools selected are Charles West Prep and Andre Agassi College Prep in Las Vegas; Garret Jr. High in Boulder City; Mt. Tipton in Dolan Springs, AZ and Mojave Accelerated in Bullhead City, AZ.
The reason that these schools were chosen was partly because of their proximity to the Lake Mead Recreation Area. The Park Service is footing the bill for the annual trips with the major expense being transportation.
“We also chose these schools because each one of them is a single feeder into their high schools,” Anderson said. “We were looking for schools where we would have consistency in the class, where we would be working with pretty much the same kids each year.”
Massaro said that the experience had been quite valuable as an educational experience for her students.
“Our kids are lucky, because of where they live, they get to be outdoors a lot,” Massaro said. “They are outside on horseback or four-wheelers or hiking in the hills. Even so, I was still surprised that, for many of them, this was a first trip to the Valley of Fire. They had fun and wanted to come back and see it again. And you can’t teach Earth Science any better than that; to go out and see it.”
