Rationale:

• Citizens who have a commitment to stewardship and clearly defined relationship with the environment are generally positive, productive members of society.
• Students who learn self-evaluative skills that help them investigate their relationship with their community are more likely to be good citizens.
• Missouri STREAM TEAMs are able to bring about positive changes for streams and watersheds through their ability to solidify their members’ commitment to protecting a stream in their community.

Student relevance:

• Students who have a well-defined relationship with the environment and can understand the results of their actions are more likely to be good stewards of the natural world.
• Students will benefit as citizens if they are able to analyze and evaluate issues of aesthetics, ethics, and stewardship.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion, students will be able to . . .

• Better understand that as a citizen of a community, there exists a responsibility to take care of the streams and their watersheds.
• Understand some of the consequences resulting from changes in standards of living, population growth, and changes in lifestyles between rural and urban populations.

Students Need to Know:

• Actions have consequences.
• Society is made up of lots of different kinds of people and interests.
• Stewardship of our natural resources means taking responsibility for caring for natural resources.
• To sustain a commitment to stewardship, citizens need to have the skills to evaluate their own commitment to actions.
• It is possible to gain respect in a community by doing something that benefits the whole community.
• We all live downstream and everyone benefits from clean streams and healthy watersheds.

Teachers Need to Know:

• As young people define their roles in their community, activities that build citizenship are a benefit to the person and the community.
• Young people find themselves dealing with consequences resulting from the creation of a “modern” society they had nothing to do with. This concept will create ethical questions during discussions.
• In a culturally diverse society, groups may have different values and behaviors toward conservation and natural resource issues. Young people sometimes find it difficult to accept cultural differences. The concepts of tolerance and sensitivity may be active discussion topics.
• Students are not always aware of changes over time in themselves, community, and natural surroundings. If they are constantly reminded of the “effect over time” on several topics, it will help them understand.

Resources:

Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949.

Glasser, William. Schools Without Failure. New York: Harper Collins, 1975.

The following materials are available from the Missouri Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180, (573)751-4115.

Missouri Storm Drain Stenciling Project
Volunteer Water Quality Monitoring Program

Youth Working for Clean Water, 1991 (Free)
Available from the Phelps Center for the Gifted, 932 S. Kimbrough, Springfield, MO 65806.

25 Things You Can Do to Prevent Water Waste
Available from American Water Works Association, 6666 W. Quincy Ave., Denver, CO 80235, (303)794-7711.

Materials Needed for Lesson:

Pencils
Paper
Stewardship Reading (one per student, optional)
Stewardship Commitment Survey (one per student)
Stewardship Transparency

Procedure:

• Read and discuss the Stewardship reading.
• Discuss stewardship, citizenship, urbanization, symbiosis, and cultural diversity (see Glossary).
• Show and discuss the Stewardship transparency.
• Give the Stewardship Commitment Survey.
• Let students share their survey answers.
• In closing, encourage students to get involved in a stream project, clean-up, or other community activity.

Evaluation Strategies:

Community-Based Evaluation:

• Have students collect newspaper articles that report on actions individuals or groups are taking to show a commitment to restoring an ecosystem.
• Have students write a letter to the editor of the local paper describing the importance of working to preserve some natural feature of their community.

Essay Questions:

• How has your commitment to stewardship changed by analyzing the relationship between citizenship and responsibility?
• Describe how natural beauty in your community is a source of community pride.

Role Playing Evaluation Strategy:

• Have students choose an environmental issue that affects streams in their community.
• Have them write down possible differing points of view of city officials, police, sportsmen, businessmen, naturalists, children, and others.
• Ask them to randomly choose a point of view and try to persuade others that point of view is valid.

Extension Activities:

• Discuss organisms which have a symbiosis-type relationship.
• Keep a journal of observations in the community which reflect ownership of natural resources.
• As a classroom, apply to become a STREAM TEAM and adopt a section of stream in or near your community. Apply on line at www.mostreamteam.org or call 800-781-1989 Voice Mail and leave contact information

Suggested Scoring Guide:

Personal Commitment to Stewardship

Teacher Name: ________________________________________

Student Name: ________________________________________

Stewardship in this context is the concept of citizens taking responsibility to care for their natural environment.

In Missouri, we have a tradition of stewardship and conservation practices which have helped sustain and protect our natural environment for more than 60 years. In today’s society, change in lifestyles, increased urbanization, population growth, and other factors have made us more aware of concerns such as habitat loss, water quality problems, and land use issues.

In order to address a wide range of environmental issues affecting us today, it is important for citizens to realize that stewardship of natural resources is a responsibility of citizenship.

It is important to provide citizens with information which will make them aware of how their actions affect the natural environment—not to create alarm or place blame, but to help them make educated choices and be responsible citizens. We live in a culturally diverse society. It is important to honor differences and work together for the betterment of all. We must train each other to have skills which can effect change, and then provide opportunities to use our skills and knowledge to have a positive impact.

Missouri’s STREAM TEAM Program is one way to exhibit stewardship in a community. The success of the program has come from volunteers taking an interest in a stream in their community and working together to monitor, clean up and protect that stream. By being personally involved, STREAM TEAM members have come to value the stream as their own and have assumed their role as stewards. They have come to appreciate the aesthetics of the stream for themselves and for their community.

1. “An ethic ecology is a limitation on freedom of action in the struggle for existence.”1 Name three limitations on your freedom to do anything you want with free-running streams.
   
2. Name three stream problems that affect your daily living.
   
3. Symbiosis is the tendency of individuals or groups to evolve modes of cooperation. There are three types: Communalism, mutualism, parasitism. Put a check by the following which best describes your relationship with your natural resources.

   a. ___ Communalism: I share food and space without benefit or harm to the environment.

   b.___ Mutualism: I share food and space, and my environment is apparently benefited and so do I.

   c.___ Parasitism: I share food and space, and I create varying degrees of injury to the environment.

4. Name one stream concern which you would be willing to work on that, if not taken care of, would prevent your family from enjoying some water recreational activity.
   
5. Name a water problem which has cost your family or community money.
   
6. Name a watershed concern that you feel could affect the health of people in your community.
   
7. Much of our commitment to stewardship is based on being a member of a community. We are respected when we exhibit citizenship. What have you done in your community which you would consider an act of good citizenship?
   
8. How can citizenship enlarge the boundaries of the community to include the whole watershed?

_______________________

1 Sand County Almanac

Stewardship

Citizens Taking Responsibility