MANKATO — It wasn’t long ago that one could have spotted teacher Brett Riss outside Prairie Winds Middle School with a chainsaw clearing brush from a pair of derelict plots of land. Riss didn’t know much about prairies. He knew even less about the task he was about to tackle.
The polygons were home to a host of unwanted growth, both big in the form of encroaching tree cover and small in the form of roots and other nasty plant life. When a chainsaw failed, rakes came in. Then came a full round of chemical killing to completely rout otherwise stubborn invasive species.
Those three or so years of work will come to a head in the coming weeks. That’s when the prospective prairie land abutting the parent drop-off lane and near an existing prairie will be getting a proper planting of native plant species, substantiating the middle school’s namesake.
“If I’m a parent, I’m thinking, ‘How cool would it be to drive through prairies (when dropping students off),’” Riss said.
The Prairie Winds project is one of several environmental conservation efforts throughout Mankato Area Public Schools and beyond being undertaken in partnership with the Mankato Area Stewardship Program. The program is a coalition between the school district, Minnesota State University and a host of other conservation partners.
The partnership seeks to bring together students from grade school through high school with college students, their professors and other natural resources professionals. It also established stewardship teams at various schools who take on the task of caring for their own school spaces. Field trips and learning days are also integral to the group’s work.
Throughout the district, students, teachers and grounds and facilities staff have been hard at work creating ecologically vibrant projects.
In upper North Mankato at Dakota Meadows, what was once a humble retention pond is morphing into an indispensable outdoor learning space teeming with life, said the school’s Stewardship Team adviser, Laura Bemel. In partnership with the school’s grounds crew, the group hopes to continue to expand and enrich the habitat around the pond.
Bemel said the students taking part are often at the helm of the group’s efforts.
“These kids have passion. I think it’s more them leading us,” Bemel said.
Prairie Winds Conservation Club members — some of whom are part of the school’s Stewardship Team, which Riss leads—were recently hard at work making seed balls to be sold at parent-teacher conferences. The amalgamation of seeds the students harvested from the already thriving school prairie can be thrown in lawns to sprout a host of prairie plants. Over recent years, the club, headed by teacher Lynell Senden, has grown from four members to 60, member Maddy Breit said. But she believes there’s still plenty of work to be done.
“A lot of kids could care less about what we’re doing, but that’s kind of why it’s important to see the growth of our club,” Breit said.
On Thursday a handful of Jefferson Elementary students planted a mix of prairie plants in terraced gardens abutting the school’s playground with assistance from a pair of MSU students. Overseeing the process was Henry Panowitsch from the Many Rivers chapter of Prairie Enthusiasts, a nationwide stewardship organization.
Panowitsch, who also played an advisory role at the Prairie Winds project and is a partner in the Mankato Area Stewardship Program, said that teaching children before they become set in their ways is crucial when it comes to creating a culture of conservation.
“They’re learning; they don’t have to unlearn, so when you show something to them, that’s the first time they see and, you know, the older we get, we get hardening of the categories,” Panowitsch said.
To that end, he believes prairies are a unique teaching tool in their ability to show rather than tell students the interdependence of nature and all its critters.
In addition to providing shelter to myriad animals, prairies serve as mechanisms to trap rain water that eventually replenishes our water table. Additionally, Panowitsch said, they provide ample atmospheric carbon capture, lessening the effects of the greenhouse gas effect.
“A prairie is a very generous environment to all life forms,” he said.
That includes humans.
“You see, in human beings, we have a physical body, we have a mental body. We also have a spiritual body. And I think nature and the spiritual body need each other,” said Panowitsch, a student of Eastern philosophies.
Jefferson Principal Melissa Brueske said that her students have blossomed while taking part in outdoor activities at the outdoor-nature based focus school.
“What we’ve noticed is that there’s so many other skills that are coming from this, particularly the skill to stop and observe and notice,” Brueske said from her office that overlooks the prairie terraces.
Those close to the work of the Mankato Area Stewardship Program said much of its momentum sprouted from the work of Mankato East science teacher Julia Battern, who for years has used the forest near the school’s football field as an outdoor classroom. The 2023 recipient of the Buzz Ryan Award, which recognizes non-Department of Natural Resources staff who have made significant contributions to Minnesota’s forests, Batten has long emphasized the power of nature in her lessons.
An early organizer of the now annual Minneopa field days wherein area science students stop and learn at various stations throughout Minneopa State Park, Battern has become known as a mobilizing force for local ecological education.
“There’s so much we can’t teach and that can only be experienced firsthand, and that involves getting outside,” Battern said.
The Mankato Area Stewardship Program is funded through the year by the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Organizers of the effort are optimistic that lawmakers will continue to see the program’s value and OK another round of funding.
The prospective $200,000 funding would help the group continue its wide range of environmental programs for the following two years, said Kimberly Musser, the project coordinator for grants and the director of the Water Resources Center at MSU.
Musser believes the success of the collaborative has come from its “shared leadership model.”
“We’re all learning together to improve our school grounds and also our backyards,” Musser said of her collaborators.
Panowitsch said the work of the Mankato Area Stewardship Program is one part of what he hopes will be an expanding web of efforts to reconnect our culture with nature.
He thinks we can all do with a bit more nature in our lives. That’s because he believes being in nature can help us realize a bit more about ourselves.
“The biggest thing is human beings don’t know how wonderful they are, and so it’s really a case of mistaken identity,” Panowitsch said.