BEA Forestry and Wildlife Management Students Use Nature as Their Classroom

WINGATE — For students who enjoy the outdoors and practical, hands-on learning, the innovative forestry and wildlife management program at Bald Eagle Area High School could be a great fit.

“The majority of the days, we’re outside looking at what Mother Nature put there,” said Jade Thompson, the teacher who developed the program with input from the school’s advisory committee. He’s taught the course since the 2017-18 school year.

“I’ve been at the school 19 years,” he said. “They wanted to start this class and I guess I just fit the mold for it. My undergraduate degree is in wildlife and fishery science, and I took quite a few forestry classes.”

Students can enroll for their junior or senior years, or they can take it both years. Thompson said the program is three periods a day, every day — 126 minutes — for the entire school year. “The students are outside doing hands-on activities around 75% of the time and classroom activities around 25% of the time.

“This class has had a wide range of students,” he said. “We’ve had students that are honors students and are in the top 10% of their graduating class every year. We’ve had two female students take the program and both were very successful.”

His current class has 11 students, and he said typical class size is around 16 or17.

Thompson said Central Mountain School District teaches a nine-week forestry unit in its agriculture program and uses the same company as BEASD for chainsaw certification.

“According to my research, no one in the state runs one like we do,” he said.

BEASD owns hundreds of acres of woodlands that serve as the outdoor classroom.

“I believe if other schools have similar resources that adding a class like this one would extremely benefit their students,” Thompson said.

The school’s insurance company requires the students to be certified in chainsaw use and safety before they can use a chainsaw to harvest trees.

“The principal and I reached out and tried to find the best certification we can have,” Thompson said. “And we found the Game of Logging, which is a national certification program. Penn State, PennDOT and Penn Tech use it. The guy comes in and certifies our kids at level 1 and level 2.

“It’s a lifelong certification,” Thompson said. “They make it like a game. It gets scored from the beginning to the end. The kids really enjoy it because it brings that game aspect into it. The guy that runs it, Kevin Snyder, he’s amazing with the kids and the chainsaw itself. He and his wife, Tammi, come for two days, and the kids look forward to it. They give 100% because most teenage kids like to win.

“It’s absolutely invaluable,” Thompson said. “You don’t realize the little things you do that aren’t the safest. He does an amazing job because each kid gets to cut their own tree down from start to finish, with a felling plan, to finishing it up, limbing it, bucking it, and getting it ready for the sawmill. He’ll pick a tree for someone that is a more difficult cut and he’ll talk them through it step-by-step.”

Snyder puts a stake in the ground, and the students try to hit the stake when they down the tree. They lose a point for each inch the tree is away from the stake. The students also gain or lose points for safety issues and the quality of the tree stump.

“Most people I talk to are amazed the school actually allows students to run a chainsaw, and how well-versed they get in a two-year period with it,” Thompson said.

“I ask the kids, what is our best-case scenario here? I guide those conversations,” he said. “There’s lots of times we walk away from a tree and don’t cut it, based on these conversations. We never cut the most healthy trees. We leave them for future generations.”

Thompson has the class consider the wildlife aspect and erosion.

“What uses this tree?” he asks. “What benefits from keeping it or cutting it?

“We have whole units in aquatics, wildlife and forestry,” he said. “The class learns about and discusses genetics, a base knowledge of the soil, nutrients, hydrology and tree identification.

“For any skill, they learn to ask, what am I doing here and why am I doing it?” Thompson said. “That’s the big thing for me, that the kids know the whole thinking process. It adds to the safety of the process. Hopefully that carries over into anything else they do.”

The students learn to operate the Wood Mizer LA30 saw mill to turn logs into boards.

“This year, we’ve supplied 80% of the wood for wood shop, ag mechanics and forestry construction classes,” he said. “This coming year, 2023-24, we will be 100%. We will not buy any wood outside the school. Every product that’s made in those classes was wood that was prepared by students probably one to two years prior.”

He said the cabinetry in the teacher’s lounge and the library was made by the kids from wood harvested on school property.   

The students also learn to use a wood chipper and splitter and how to operate the solar kiln, built by previous students to dry the wood.

Other class activities include making maple syrup from sap, monitoring the stream’s water quality, raising trout from eggs and maintaining and repairing equipment and tractors. 

Thompson certifies the students nationally for driving the tractor. They receive a National Tractor and Machinery Operation Certificate.

All the students get certified in first aid, CPR and Stop the Bleed, which trains the students to give first aid for deep wounds and severe puncture wounds that bleed profusely.

They also get training to become Sustainable Forestry Initiative card holders.

SFI Board Member Mark Ott said, “If you’re going to cut or work on a DCNR (Department of Conservation and Natural Resources) property, like a state forest, you need to be credentialed by SFI.”

Thompson said, “Every logging company has to have an SFI certified employee to put in a bid to cut trees. They have to be recertified and take classes every two years.”
Ott said, “I was the school’s food service director from 2005 to 2016. I started the whole darned thing. I noticed the school had a heck of a lot of property and a need for a forestry plan.”

He and the school superintendent, Dan Fisher, sought funding to pay for the plan. Mike Eckley of the Nature Conservancy was able to obtain funding from Domtar Corporation, a paper mill in Johnsonburg, in exchange for first right of refusal for any wood from the school’s forest that would work to make wood pulp for paper, on an ongoing basis.

Ott said the written forestry plan is the basis for the students’ projects.

“I have quite a few graduates who went to Penn Tech, Lycoming and Penn State for forestry,” Thompson said. He noted some went into landscaping, a few went directly to work for the forestry industry, and some chose business management and other careers.

“By the end of the year, I’d take these kids to do any project out there,” Thompson said. “They all work together. I know they can figure it out. That serves them a much better purpose than reading a textbook and taking a test. We still do take tests.

“The school is very flexible with students,” Thompson said. “Let them do it, let them figure it out.”