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Hi, my name's Tarin Rickett and I'm an Ambassador Girl Scout in Troop 1234 from Croton-on-Hudson,
NY and for my Gold Award, I created, tested, and published a lesson plan on invasive plants.
An invasive species, like the phragmites here, is a plant or animal that has been transported
over from a foreign ecosystem. As they have no natural predators in the new area, the
invasive species uses up resources, quickly taking over the area, while depleting resources
for native species, and disrupting the balance of the entire ecosystem.
My first mentor was Charlie Roberto who gave me an introduction to invasive plants and
showed me the park that I worked at, Croton Landing, so he was the starting off point for me.
My project focused on three, local invasive plants: Japanese knotweed, a hardy, bamboo-like
plant; Porcelain Berry, a choking vine that closely resembles the native Grape Vine; and
Mugwort, shoots that can quickly overtake any underbrush.
My other two mentors, Katie Brennan and Susan Sammon, helped me with the education aspect
of my project.
Hi, I'm Susan Sammon, I'm a certified teacher, and I have worked at an alternative high school
so when Tarin came to me and talked to me about this project that she had about educating
students and working on removing invasive plants, I was so excited to get on board.
I really think you did a great job on is that you created a lesson plan that was ready for
teachers to use. You put it in the format that teachers use, with objectives, materials,
and everything they needed and also you gave them resources and links to websites that
had government agencies that had lots of information so that they could really use it at the fifth-grade
level all the way, you even tested it at the high school level, and it was also a tested
lesson which was great.
To test the effectiveness of my lesson plan, I worked with Katie Brennan, a fifth-grade
teacher at Pierre Van Cortlandt middle school. She let me into her classroom not only to
test the in-class, powerpoint aspect of my lesson, but work with the kids on a field
trip portion as well.
We went to Croton Landing in the Fall and in the Spring and the kids got to see the
difference between the colors, the size, the shapes from the two different seasons. Then,
when we back, they were amazed by how much it had grown and were able to pull some of
it out realizing how pervasive it is because they pulled a lot and didn't get very far.
To expand the reach of my project, I created a website to advertise and explain my lesson
plan. I included links to download the booklet as well as the slideshow and handout.
Classroom Earth was really a tremendous answer and demonstration of her talent in really
spreading the word about invasive plant species well beyond Croton.
Classroom Earth is part of a program drafted by Congress in 1990 to help expand environmental
education. I contacted Classroom Earth and they posted my lesson plan to their site,
which helped generate a lot of interest.
Now, my lesson plan and associated handouts have reach over *1300* reads and downloads.
One of the things I was really proud of with this project is that I feel like I was really
able to make a difference. I was able to educate people about an unusual topic that poses a
serious threat not only to distant forests and wetlands, but to their own backyards.