Perhaps pristine blue lakes, fishing, conifer forests, or snowmobiling? If you are like many people, cultural diversity is probably not on the list. It was not on Amanda Nosal’s mind when she moved to the Northwoods in 2011 after graduating from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities with a Bachelor’s degree in wildlife. Since that time she has gained a profound appreciation for the Northwood’s cultural diversity, and it started with one school’s desire to learn about the cultures in the surrounding area and beyond.

Amanda Nosal on a trip with Conserve School students in the Porcupine Mountains

For the last two years as part of her graduate study through University of Wisconsin Stevens Point College of Natural Resources Nosal has lived and worked at Conserve School, an environmentally-focused semester program for high school juniors. Located on the border between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, Conserve School engages students from across the country in 17 weeks of active and experiential education amidst a setting of lakes, bogs, and forests.

And culture. In honoring their mission to inspire environmental stewardship Conserve School strives to teach students how cultural perspectives influence the ways people interact and impact the environment. “To conserve the environment we are going to have to think of different ways of living,” explained Mary Anna Thornton, Assistant Head of Conserve School. Under the guidance of Associate Professor Brenda Lackey, Nosal investigated how Conserve School currently addresses cultural studies and researched how such a study could evolve through local multicultural collaboration.

The Northwoods is home to two primary cultures. One is mainstream American with a history of mining, logging, and outdoor recreation. The other culture is Native American. Specifically, the Northwoods is home to a number of Ojibwe communities (also known as Chippewa or Anishinaabe). These two cultures share a generally peaceful existence. However, cultural misunderstandings around topics like natural resources management have sparked occasional episodes of conflict and even violence.

All the more reason to learn to understand one another.

The students of Conserve School are learning to understand. Nosal found that Conserve School already provides some opportunities for students to directly learn from the people from the local Ojibwe communities. For example, Conserve School often hosts Ojibwe community members for cultural presentations and demonstrations, including hands-on workshops about the traditional process of harvesting and preparing wild rice.

“As the world changes and more cultures come into contact, I believe it is crucial that we learn how to respect each other and our cultures because it is part of the answer to a peaceful coexistence with each other and the environment,” said Nosal after the completion of her project. “Cultures are always changing and the learning will never stop. It can sometimes be uncomfortable to step outside our comfort zones, but the rewards of new experiences are well worth it.”

In her project report Nosal recommended that Conserve School expand their collaboration with the local Native American communities through opportunities like multicultural management of important natural resources such as wild rice. Whatever form future collaborations take, the intention should be to build greater cultural understanding so that everyone can happily live together in a healthy environment. As one Northwoods Ojibwe community member said, “I really believe that we all, maybe not think the same way, but we want the same end product. We want to save the environment, we want our children to live in a nice place. We’re not all that different, really.”

In 2011 Conserve School students visited the re-created Ojibwe Indian Village, Waswagoning

An elder from a local Native American community visited Conserve School in 2012 to share with students how his people traditionally lived in harmony with the Northwoods’ seasons.

In 2012 Conserve School students practiced traditional wild rice harvesting at a local Native American ricing camp.

This article was prepared by Amanda Nosal and edited by Stefan Anderson.

Last week, Conserve School students took to the streets of Land O’Lakes or to the trails of the surrounding forests to volunteer. On Wednesday, May 15th, you could find Conserve members painting the walls of the Land O’Lakes ice rink, helping to control the invasive honeysuckle, cleaning up litter along the highway, preparing the library garden, landscaping the chamber of commerce grounds, and much more. The day was very successful and the community was very appreciative. It is truly amazing how much can be accomplished when everyone works together for the good of the community…and it was fun!

We were starting to doubt the day would come, but at last it has!  The students are finally out on the lake!  After enjoying an early “ice-out” last year in mid-March, it seemed like this year’s spring was never coming.  Earlier in May, Field Instruction took a trip to a local high school in order to get swim testing and t-rescues in on time.  But now, thanks to the warm weather, the lakes have finally opened up and Field Instruction is able to take advantage of Big Donahue Lake right next to the recreation center (commonly refered to as the LRC).

Today in Field Instruction the students are continuing to practice their canoeing skills.  They are using this afternoon to sharpen some of their skills at the different paddle strokes, turning, canoeing in a straight line, and improving their canoeing teamwork.  Later this week, the History and English classes will be paddling a five lake loop in the Sylvania Wilderness Area, so it’s good to get some canoe practice in now.  The students who are going on a canoe trip for Exploration Week also used this time to practice their canoe skills with others from their group.

You’ll notice the sky in the pictures is overcast, thankfully the rain held off so the students could enjoy the afternoon out on the lake!

I was assisted in the booth by alumnus Paige Nygaard and Conserve School Graduate Fellow Pete Gizyn. They did a great job and together we distributed over 275 Conserve School brochures along with many poster, pens and key chains. By Sunday evening my throat was a bit sore from telling so many people about Conserve School’s amazing semester school program for high school students and the fact it is so affordable. Over the past few years a number of students have first learned about Conserve School through the Green Festival. I am eager to see new applications and inquiries that mention this year’s event.

Regards,

Stefan Anderson
Head of School

This past Wednesday and Thursday , CS6 students took part in one of the highlights of the Conserve School semester experience, the solo camp-out.

For solos, students are broken up into groups of six to eight students, each of which is assigned one or two staff members and an area of campus with several individual campsites spread out within it as well as one larger “base camp” campsite. The adults stay at the base camp and check on the solo-ists periodically, using a messaging system to make sure that students are okay without interrupting their solos. If a student doesn’t leave the designated message at the appointed time and place, the staff member investigates further. (The usual reason for a student failing to leave an “all is well” signal is that they have fallen asleep.)

The first night all students elected to camp out on their own. (We encourage all students to do so, but solos are challenge by choice, so occasionally students will choose to stay at the “base camp” with a staff member, and everyone respects that choice.) On the second night, students can choose to have a second overnight on their own or to join others at their base camp for dinner, a campfire with some debriefing activities, and a group camp-out.

A big thank you to Cathy Palmer, our Director of Outdoor Programs, for another successful solo camping experience.

Check out our Facebook page for even more photos of this special Conserve School experience.

During the closing ceremony of my semester at Conserve School, we were all left with one final assignment: “to go out and change the world”. I had felt so inspired and exited by those words, yet as I was getting off the plane in Makassar, Indonesia, my time in the Northwoods felt like a world away as I was greeted with an overwhelming heat and surrounded by an Indonesian family whose daughter I would soon become.

A country I could once hardly locate on a map has become a place I call home. People I once saw as strangers selflessly have opened up their culture to me. Indonesians who make less than a dollar a day took me into their homes to sit down with them for a meal. I’ve seen children having more fun playing with a beat-up soccer ball on the beach than I’ve ever had on an iPad.

I was brought to countless events celebrating weddings, births and even Ramadan. I spent an entire afternoon sifting through almost every vendor of the local market in my village in search of a turkey to prepare my family for their first Thanksgiving dinner. When Christmas came around, my entirely Muslim host family decorated the banana tree in their backyard with snowflakes cut from newspaper and that night we all watched It’s a Wonderful Life with Indonesian subtitles.

Even though I can’t imagine how much I’ll miss Indonesia once I leave next month, the experiences I’ve had will guide me in discovering how I can go out and change the world.

Kaitlyn Waters
Conserve School Alum, CS2

Thank you Kaitlyn for sharing these thoughts and photos! ~Stefan Anderson, Head of School

History Teacher and Ultimate Frisbee Enthusiast, Michael Salat initiated the first game of the semester where several Conserve School CS6 students participated in the high flying fun!

With only a few weeks left in the semester, students are overjoyed to finally be able to enjoy outdoor activities that don’t require snowshoes and skis.  All weekend long, the bike paths begun to swarm with actual bicycles and students could be seen wearing shorts and t-shirts, and spirits were high.

History and English classes often combine for interdisciplinary lessons at Conserve School because the schedule makes doing so simple. However, with a little reshuffling we made a different combination work this Monday and Tuesday: the history and environmental science classes combined for a field trip to a local property where timber was being harvested.

After using old-fashioned hand tools to cut timber in a previous history lesson, some students were expecting to find men at work with crosscut saws. Instead, they found a modern timber processor, which one student commented “looked like a transformer”! The powerful machine, operated by a single logger, could cut down a full-sized tree and slice it into logs in less than a minute. When its work disturbed the nest of a flying squirrel, we got the treat of watching it glide from tree to tree into an intact area nearby. Master logger Ken Adamovitch, husband of a member of Conserve School’s staff, gave his time to answer student questions on his work.

After such a late spring this year, it was a pleasure to get off-campus with our students on a warm, sunny afternoon. At Conserve School, the community – both the ecological community and the local human community – are part of the classroom.

Rebecca Deatsman
Graduate Fellow

This past Sunday Conserve School mathematics teacher Arjen Krijgsman led a group of 9 students to O Kun De Kun Falls located in the heart of the Ottawa National Forest about 35 miles north of Conserve School.

The hike from the parking area to the falls was about 1.3 miles long and students brought snowshoes to help navigate the late spring snow this year. They found the trail to be a mix of snowy patches and muddy ground. The day warmed up into the high 60′s and the snow in the area was melting quickly so the Baltimore River which pours over the falls was in full force.

One of the interesting features of the falls is that there is a safe area where you can sneak behind them at the bottom for a unique perspective on the rushing water. You may notice in the photos that the water looks brown. This is normal for early spring runoff.

I enjoyed hearing the stories of this epic adventure from the students and Arjen along with admiring their pictures. I hope you do to.

~Stefan Anderson
Head of School

Contributed photos by Maren Hurly-Matz and Arjen Krijgsman

In 1871, an expedition headed into what would become Yellowstone National Park. The party included an artist, a photographer, and a writer, who documented what they found and reported to Congress on the area’s natural wonders. This expedition led directly to the creation of the world’s first national park.

On Thursday and Friday, Conserve School’s English and History classes combined for the afternoon to give students the opportunity to recreate this expedition themselves. Broken into teams of three – artist, photographer, and writer – they headed north into the Sylvania Wilderness under staff supervision, where they set about documenting the area’s unique natural beauty in preparation for testifying before a mock Congress next week. Two of the groups and I snowshoed to Fisher Lake, a small lake bordered by a bog, with student Jennie leading the way with map and compass.

Activities like this one, that cross disciplines while bringing the students closer to the landscape of the North Woods, are at the heart of the Conserve School experience. We’re fortunate to have both a flexible class schedule to make days like this possible and a wilderness classroom right in our backyard!

Rebecca Deatsman
Graduate Fellow