NYC H2O just wrapped up our fall season of free outdoor field trips for New York school children. Our STEM education programs provide a scientific and historical understanding of New York City’s local water cycle and infrastructure. We gave 50 water ecology tours this fall reaching 1,200 students mostly from underserved Title I schools. Altogether, we gave 95 school tours in 2015 that reached 2,300 students, nearly double last year’s total! How did we do this? Give yourself extra credit, since your donations helped make this possible along with those of the sponsors listed below. You also helped us clean up Plumb Beach, an effort that will become even more of a focus for us next year when we begin tours there.
Perhaps most excitingly: even as we continued giving our oversubscribed tours of historic reservoirs at Central Park, Jerome Park, Ridgewood, Silver Lake and Baisley Pond, we added the High Bridge and Ellis Island as new sites this fall. The High Bridge is NYC’s oldest standing bridge and was built in 1848 as part of the first Croton Aqueduct. After being closed since the 1970’s, the bridge was reopened in June after a 3-year renovation. NYC H2O guides were especially honored to be given professional development sessions by Bryan Diffley, the engineer in charge of the bridge’s renovation.
Students were awed by the bridge’s views, scale and history. They learned that without the Croton Aqueduct, NYC would not be a thriving metropolis. They also learned about the history of the bridge through the beautiful bronze medallions incorporated into its deck. Students made rubbings of the medallions. Back in their classrooms they used them to make timelines.
