ARKVILLE _ A group of teachers gathered at the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development on Tuesday to learn how to connect their students with the land and heritage of the Catskills.
Teachers from Roxbury, Margaretville, Hunter and Windham/Ashland/Jewett schools participated in exercises incorporated in "The Catskills: A Sense of Place."
The curriculum consisted of five modules: water resources, geography and geology, ecosystems, human history and culture and arts of the Catskills.
The theory behind the program, organizers said Tuesday, is to give children a better understanding and appreciation of the distinctive features of the Catskill area, which can help promote active citizenship and a better future for the area.
To explore the geography of the Catskills, the teachers were divided into teams to search maps to find answers to a "Names on the Land" challenge.
To be considered part of the Catskills, a place must be within Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Ulster or southwestern Albany county. For the "Names on the Land" segment, the teachers searched for places with names that contained compass directions, landforms, animals, an industry, colors or people's names.
Names that reflected activities or industry included Tannersville and Sawville. Names related to geology included Rockland and Grand Gorge. The Bluestone Wild Forest contains a color and Prattsville was named after a man.
Aaron Bennett, CCCD education director, said, "It's all about kids learning about where they live and what's around them."
Julia Goren, regional educator, took the group on a tour of watersheds using topographical maps.
Goren said defining a watershed can be challenging.
"A watershed is definitely not a shed that holds water," Goren said. "But you wouldn't believe how often I have heard that."
Goren told the teachers to work with their students so they can learn how water moves.
"I heard a contractor say once that you have to learn to think like water," one of the teachers said.
The group struggled to figure out the contours of the land around Echo Lake by studying a two-dimensional map, but soon they were sharing methods to make the maps make sense to children.
Bennett had the group listen to a taped interview with Eleanor Arold in which she talked about the loss of her family's home when the Ashokan Reservoir was built. It was part of the "Forced to Leave Home" lesson.
Bennett suggested that the teachers write down or draw their feelings as they listened to Arold talk about her mother's connection to the family home.
"My mother grew to love the beauty of the reservoir, but she never really got over the hurt," Arold said.
Bob Gildersleeve of the Mountaintop Historical Society said, "We remember by looking back to our youth, but when the past is gone, how do you replace it? There is a melancholy there."
Karen Bramley, who teaches second grade in Roxbury, talked about her sadness at the memories being lost.
"I was absolutely amazed when no one in my class knew there were towns under the reservoir," Bramley said. "I'm from Margaretville and I always knew _ it was ingrained that people had lost their homes, so it never occurred to me that the students wouldn't know."
Finally, watershed educator Ben Murdock guided the group through a bucket of bugs. He explained that the type of insects living in water indicate the cleanliness of the water.
The teams were given paper cups filled with cutouts of bugs that they had to identify to determine how dirty their water was. The exercise is usually done with students identifying real insects they find in area streams and lakes.
Dan Cohen, who teaches fifth grade in Margaretville, said "the kids absolutely love it" when they take part in the stream-watch activities. He added that he was at the daylong seminar to find out how to incorporate additional activities into English, history and science lessons.
"The Catskill Center does so many things, and the kids get so turned on that they just absorb the information," Cohen said. "I feel so lucky that Margaretville is so close to this resource."
For information, call The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development at (845) 586-2611 or visit www.catskillcenter.org.
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