We have been interviewing teachers to see how Project CAT and Stewardship of Place has influenced them and their teachings in the classroom.  We asked these questions:

1) Has Project CAT influenced your work in the classroom?

2) How do you use nature lessons in your daily classroom assignments?

3) (In relation to the last question) Is this something that will be displayed at the Student Learning Celebration?

4) On as personal level, have you been affected by Project CAT? If so, how?

We asked all the teachers individually these questions, and they had the following answers.

Mrs. Rachel Palo (Kindergarten):

 "Project CAT has influenced our work in the classroom. We are way more into nature and animals around our area, rather then all around the world. For Example, we used to work on a penguin unit, which we have now replaced with an 'animals in winter' unit focusing on our animals in our neighborhood. The unit is taught in January and February. We also do some nature lessons within our math assignments too. Stuff like "counting with bears"...remember, these are kindergartners doing this. On a personal level, this did affect me because I have changed the way I teach. One of the highlights was when they used to bring cats out into the parking lot and we would go get to see them...it was so cool."

Mrs. Bonnie Christian (4th Grade):

 "Yes. We have more reasearch and more outdoor education. With Project Cat, we learn a lot about habitats, we have nature walks, sit spots and help our observation skills. We research on local spieces, have cougar reports and diaramas. Yes we will have stuff that will be displayed at the Student Learning Celebration like our diaramas and cougar reports. My daughter, Rudy, was one of the first 1st students that got to go out...it got her more interested in cougars, tracking and more aware of animals out there." 

Mrs. Trish Griswold (7th Grade and Project CAT Coordinator):

"Project CAT has given a focus to our work. It brings Science and Math classwork together with the real world through the wildlife scientists' work. We make classroom connections with natural world as often as we can because that is what we know about. We have lots of memories! At the SLC we will be displaying LTRP work. These are our long outdoor research questions. We will be graphing, analyzing our data and creating presentation boards to share our results. We would also like to share macro-invertabrates from Crystal Creek. These tell us about the health of that ecosystem. Personally, through Project CAT I have been able to bring my previous degree in Forest Science/Managment into the classroom. I have made some great friends outside the school system but most importantly, I see our habitat that we share with cougars in a different way. Touching a large predator fills one with awe."