Dyson College of Arts and Sciences

e good news is that the practice of plant- ing and relocating oyster is almost as old as the oyster industry itself. Using the time-honored meth- ods, and some newly developed, the Billion Oys- ter Project began the methodical process of creating oyster reefs, with the goal of establishing an oyster population of one billion distributed among 100 reefs by the year 2035 (Billion Oyster Project 2035). In partnership with the Harbor School, BOP CCERS adopted these techniques and the science behind them for curriculum and student-teacher field prac- tice that engage schools in a culture of stewardship and a more robust understanding and appreciation of the Harbor (Billion Oyster Project and the STEM Collaboratory NYC ® ). It established a 2-year fellowship that equips middle school teachers to train their classes to monitor and maintain an "oyster restoration station." e oys- ter restoration station is a multi-part cage that houses the naturally stationary oysters, plus "settlement tiles" for sessile (immobile) organisms like barnacles and anemones, and a mobile trap for the many species of fish, shrimps, and crabs found in the Harbor (Billion Oyster Project Restoration). Since oysters grow best attached to other oysters, BOP collects shells from New York City restaurants and uses them as "substrate" for larval oysters to attach to. Once attached, these juvenile oysters become known as "spat-on-shell," and they are ready to start their new lives in the restoration stations (Billion Oyster Project Restaurants). BOP CCERS: challenge and vision BOP CCERS program was created to bring to city schools the extended classroom of New York Harbor, the single largest educational asset and STEM training ground New York City has to offer. It is the combina- tion of substance and setting that provides the program its greatest opportunity for success. e liabilities of a coastal urban location associated with modern society have been transformed into the program's greatest as- sets. But not without challenges: New York City schools, the nation's largest and most urbanized system, have unique institutional and physical challenges to teaching and learning outside of the class- room. One of the most fundamental of these is access to the natural world. Most of the City's surface is paved or lying under concrete. Most neighborhoods, and espe- cially those that are predominantly poor, have little greenspace that is accessible by foot and the majority of middle schools have no field or adjacent natural surfaces. Where there are patches of green, teachers must contend with pollution, permissions from private or public entities, and compe- tition for use of limited facilities. For the av- erage New York City public school teacher enabling students to learn or carry out in- quiry research in the natural world—be it in forests, fields, waterways, or man-made parks—is thus a logistical and physical chal- lenge too difficult to overcome on his/her own. (Janis et al. 2016, p. 6) e BOP CCERS program overcame this chal- lenge by creating a common sense of mission among students and teachers, professional scientists and citizen scientist volunteers, schools, universities, busi- nesses, and community organizations, all working together to conduct oyster restoration–based scientific research in New York Harbor. Its work is premised on a fundamental principle that schools and communities can and should play direct, active, and authentic roles in ecological restoration and stew- ardship, especially where local habitats and species have been severely degraded by human development. Its theory of change is that school is made more meaningful and student learning enhanced when curricula are aligned to a local restoration ecology project that requires students to conduct authentic problem-solving, data collection, experimentation, and research. CCERS is led by principal investigator Dr. Lauren Birney, co-author of this article, and senior personnel from Pace University School of Educa- tion, New York Harbor Foundation, New York City Department of Education's Office of STEM, Colum- bia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, New York Academy of Sciences, and the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science. Lo- cal implementing partners include Good Shepherd Services, New York Aquarium-WCS, e River Proj- ect, and Cell Motion Labs/BioBase. In total, ten core partners are collectively responsible for development of the CCERS model, its five programmatic pillars, and for helping to chart the course of the BOP Schools and Citizen Science Program, the long-term anchor proj- ect of the model. 13

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