Middle School students to hold Open House on stewardship projects at Calumet Township Park June 3

Students from Calumet's Washington Middle School work on a stewardship project at Calumet Township Park. (Photos courtesy Washington Middle School)

CALUMET -- Washington Middle School (WMS) will hold its annual Community Day Open House at Calumet Township Park from noon to 2 p.m. TODAY, Wednesday, June 3, along the shores of Lake Superior.

Each year WMS students show off their stewardship projects as presenters to parents and community partners at the township beach and School Forest areas. These place-based projects are a part of the Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative (LSSI) in conjunction with community partners Calumet Township, BHK Great Explorations, Keweenaw National Historical Park, The Alliance for the Great Lakes, and Michigan American Water Company.

After a brief introduction students will lead guests around to stations that exemplify projects undertaken last fall and throughout the school year. Each student’s work will be displayed in portfolios, project posters and slide shows at the main pavilion within the park. The students’ projects were all completed at Calumet Township Park and included Adopt-a-Beach, invasive plant removal (Spotted Knapweed), native plant plantings and School Forest management studies.

Students learn to remove invasive Spotted Knapweed safely and to replace it with native plantings as part of their stewardship projects.

Students will be on hand to show guests how trash was gathered, tallied and weighed. Representative charts will be displayed showing past and present work. Students will also demonstrate proper methods of removing Spotted Knapweed safely. Special projects like the EPA grant for exemplary schools will be demonstrated as 6th graders planted nursery stock students planted from the 7th grade science lab. Students planted native lupine to areas overrun by Spotted Knapweed in sample areas to study its effects on the noxious weed. Students have been sampling treatment effects on knapweed the past couple of years. In the School Forest students will demonstrate all facets of gathering information from one of the 1/20th-acre test plots. This will include gathering tree height data and measuring the density of the forest crowns.

217 students and thirteen teachers will continue stewardship projects like these now and in the future -- teaching students a responsibility for the place in which they play, work and live. The Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative is a part of the statewide Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative.

Click here to learn more about the Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative and other local LSSI projects.