Goodwillie Environmental School

Goodwillie Environmental School is located in Ada Township, near Grand Rapids, Michigan. It is one of three 5/6 Schools in the Forest Hills Public Schools system. The district also includes Central Woodlands 5/6 School and Northern Trails 5/6 School. Goodwillie Environmental School was featured in a Time for Kids magazine article in April 2006. The magazine features articles on the students attending Goodwillie and the various environmental projects at the school.
An Extraordinary Gift
Goodwillie-Nelson Family Donated $1.6 Million to build the Environmental School.
Mary Goodwillie Nelson and her husband, Jim Nelson, announced at the September 2000 Board of Education meeting the largest single contribution made to the Forest Hills school district. The donation memorializes Mary's first husband, Kelly, who died in 1993. The donation covered the land purchase and construction costs of a permanent home for the Forest Hills Environmental School, a program for 5th grade students which began in 1999.
Enrollment
This is a school for children who
love being outside in all kinds of weather,
enjoy working with others but can work independently,
are comfortable with or curious about nature,
enjoy physical activity,
are self-disciplined and persistent about learning, and
are interested in science and investigation.<ref name=official/>
Education
Goodwillie Environmental School is a very special school that teaches all of the normal subjects, but it also teaches the students all about the environment. Students are tested on bird calls, birds, frogs, and frog calls. The teachers take the students out for an hour or two to do Phenology. Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate. The word is derived from the Greek phainomai (φαινομαι - to appear, come into view) and indicates that phenology has been principally concerned with the dates of first occurrence of biological events in their annual cycle. Examples include the date of emergence of leaves and flowers, the first flight of butterflies and the first appearance of migratory birds, the date of leaf colouring and fall in deciduous trees, the dates of egg-laying of birds and amphibia, or the timing of the developmental cycles of temperate-zone honey bee colonies. In the scientific literature on ecology, the term is used more generally to indicate the time frame for any seasonal biological phenomena, including the dates of last appearance (e.g., the seasonal phenology of a species may be from April through September).
Because many such phenomena are very sensitive to small variations in climate, especially to temperature, phenological records can be a useful proxy for temperature in historical climatology, especially in the study of climate change and global warming. For example, viticultural records of grape harvests in Europe have been used to reconstruct a record of summer growing season temperatures going back more than 500 years. In addition to providing a longer historical baseline than instrumental measurements, phenological observations also provides high temporal resolution of ongoing changes related to global warming.

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu