On a cool, overcast school day, a small group of Oakland Hebrew Day School students throw their backpacks into a parent’s minivan for a short ride to Redwood Regional Park.
There, they play scientist for the afternoon, measuring the quality of water in Redwood Creek, a historic stream where rainbow trout were first identified as a distinct species.
The weekly field trips are equal parts ecology and Judaism, thanks to water monitoring kits supplied to the school by the Jewish National Fund.
JNF has bought the kits for 105 schools in the United States, more than double the number from two years ago. Schools in Israel are also using the water monitoring kits, which give students the tools to test a water sample’s temperature, pH, clarity and dissolved oxygen levels (higher readings indicate a healthy ecosystem, while low levels could weaken or kill the aquatic life).
Then, back in the classroom, the students talk about water in Israel — using it, conserving it, recycling it.
“The best thing about this is that it integrates Judaic and general studies. They’re not seeing them as two separate entities,” middle school science and math teacher Steven Wight said.
Wight and colleague Jill Blakemore take a small group of students every Tuesday to Redwood Creek. Though the project began as an initiative for World Water Monitoring Day — a 5-year-old initiative that in 2006 sent kits to 3,900 sites in 39 countries — Oakland Hebrew Day School plans to test the waters in Redwood Creek every week for the rest of the school year.
“We have always done a lot of learning on water, and our responsibility to be good stewards of the planet, but this adds so much more to it,” Wight said.
Classrooms then get online to track the results of their water testing. The data gives students a comprehensive view of water sources around the world.
World Water Monitoring Day began in 2002. The day, officially on Sept. 18, aims to educate communities about the condition of their water quality, the impact of their behaviors on the quality of their water resources and what they can do to help protect them.
“This is something that brings the study of water back to Israel,” said Michelle Beller, education manager at JNF in New York. “The time of year is also very relevant, as World Water Monitoring Day falls during Sukkot, so it’s also connecting students back to land and the environment, in the U.S. and Israel.”