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Hi! I’m Rachel, a senior , and I have been working with the as a Whitman Community Fellow this year.

I’m sad to see my time in this position come to an end, but when I look back, I’m proud of all the work I’ve done and what I have learned. Each month this year, I’ve gone into classrooms across the Walla Walla Valley to help teach different lessons about salmon alongside educators with the Tri-State Steelheaders, and I have also helped with social media and podcast content creation. 

This semester, I’ve taught about beavers, macroinvertebrates, and salmon anatomy. It’s been an exciting few months because these lessons are especially interactive. I’ve interacted more with the students in smaller groups, helping them build beaver dams, identify mayflies, midges, and all sorts of other creepy-crawlies, and pointing out all the external and internal features of a fish. I love seeing the students get either excited or disgusted by everything we’ve shown them. You would think they would mostly be grossed out, but they surprise you! Most of them loved the macroinvertebrates, and only a few didn’t want to see the inside of the fish. 

In March and April, we’ve also been going to Whitman Science Nights at all the Walla Walla elementary schools, running a station teaching kids about buoyancy and surface tension. Those have been fun: interacting with students we don’t usually teach and their families was a welcome change of pace.

Currently, I’m supporting the Tri-State Steelheaders in their last lesson for the month–salmon releases! Classes from each school get to come to Mill Creek on a field trip and release a salmon into the stream. They also get to hear from local speakers with experience in the environmental sector, such as learning about First Foods from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation's Department of Natural Resources or macroinvertebrates from the . It’s been a great culmination of everything we’ve worked on with the students this year, and amazing to see the students get to release the salmon they spent the year with.

The fish releases have also given me the opportunity to reflect on my growth in this position, and at Whitman, as I prepare to graduate. I have spent the year learning how to interact with each student successfully and how to lead a classroom in different activities. I’ve witnessed classrooms at their lows and highs and learned to recognize when a kid needs a little bit of extra attention or nudge back to the lesson. Although I won’t be going into the environmental education sector after school, I’ve learned a lot about myself and the kids in my community, and I’m grateful for this experience.