Heal the Bay Water Research Program Course 1, Day 1 -- June, 27 2011

Hi,  this Angela Oh reporting on the first day of the Heal the Bay PAVA creek team project.
All 32 students gathered together at the Tujunga League Baseball field around 9:30. All students turned in their payment of $150 except for one.

As the students turned in their payment, signed in, and gave their waiver forms, they were given their team numbers. There are a total of four teams, each of which contain 8 students. The teams were broken up by the staff at Heal the Bay; the students of each team are roughly from the same district and or areas.

For group and team spirit projects, the students created tie dye t-shirts in their according team color. These t-shirts were then hung and dried and will be worn by all the students each day of the rest of the program. This will help students identify each other with their team.

Edward Murphy then had a short introduction about the program and what we will be doing. The students then had a guest lecture, Melanie Winter, director of the River Project, a non-profit organization . She discussed where the water originates from and talked about how Heal the Bay influenced her work in saving parks and rivers. She emphasized how one person was able to change the environment and community as she had strived to pass legislation on saving a park, that was eventually brought to city council and successfully passed.

Afterwards, each of the four groups were to rotate about four different stations, each of which were guided by a staff member. The four stations consisted of

1) an instruction on bird watching
2) a guide to assessing the habitat of the creeks
3) process of taking out bugs and critters from the water and identifying them
4)  the water quality tests (turbidity, pH levels, nitrate levels, etc)

These four stations are to help the students later on throughout the program to do these evaluations of the creeks by themselves. The teams will be doing all these tests and examinations again for the rest of the program. The first two days are merely instruction days while the last three days, the staff members will not be available to instruct them.

The students then gathered around, listened to short messages on how to wear different shoes tomorrow and clean their tie dye shirts to wear for the next four days, and were finally dismissed.

This is a rough explanation and guideline of what happened during the first day of the program. I hope to come to you with more information for the next four days.

Thank you.

- Angela Oh