Pioneer High School teacher Rob Zaccheo credits much of the 30-year success of BioSITE — a Children’s Discovery Museum science program — to its ability to get students in touch with the environment.
“I think it’s really important to have programs like BioSITE because the connection with nature is starting to get smaller and smaller. We live in a digital age, everything’s streaming, and there’s been a loss of connection. The biggest impact is to get us all out here,” he said. “It’s really important sometimes to get students outside the four walls of the classroom.”
Pioneer High School student Cole Nakashima, center, helps teach a science lesson along the banks of the Guadalupe River on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, in San Jose, Calif. In the Children’s Discovery Museum’s BioSITE program students collect data about the local watershed in a yearlong field research course.(Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
There were no walls for the class he was at Wednesday afternoon. He kept a watchful eye as his high school students worked with fourth-graders from Allen Elementary on the banks of the Guadalupe River off Almaden Expressway in South San Jose. One of their goals for the day was to collect insects at the water’s edge, identifying them to see if they were species that tended to be more or less tolerant of pollution. Lots of bugs in the less-tolerant category was good news as it meant the river was in better shape, ecologically.
Gabby Plante, a 10th-grader at Pioneer, was one of the high schoolers helping students find macroinvertebrates — watershed insects in their larval stages. She became involved with BioSITE on the recommendation of her older sister, who had been through the program when she was a student.
“I like working with kids, especially teaching them about the environment. They always seem so interested and excited, and I get to learn stuff at the same time they do,” Plante said. “I get to learn about different types of birds and fish and their impact on the river and the riparian zone in general.”
Pioneer High School student Abigail Fong, left, looks at a water sample from the Guadalupe River on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, in San Jose, Calif. In the Children’s Discovery Museum’s BioSITE program students collect data about the local watershed in a yearlong field research course.(Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
The Pioneer mentors meet with students from three elementary schools a total of 21 times during the academic year, using lesson plans they develop themselves. Besides finding insects, they work in teams to learn about plants and animals that live in the watershed, collect and test water samples and see how people impact the environment. (Sometimes people have a positive effect, Zaccheo noted, as the area they were exploring Wednesday was part of a restoration project two decades ago and is now thriving with native growth.)
BioSITE — the last part is an acronym for “Students Investigating The Environment” — started in the 1993-94 school year and was directed for many years by Sandy Derby. Nearly 26,000 students from 40 schools, mostly in the San Jose Unified School District, have taken part in the field research program since then. BioSITE has been partially funded by Oracle and PwC for the past 14 years.
Allen at Steinbeck Elementary School student Gigi Hudson Martinez uses a magnifier to look at an insect collected from the Guadalupe River on Wednesday, April 3, 2024, in San Jose, Calif. In the Children’s Discovery Museum’s BioSITE program students collect data about the local watershed in a yearlong field research course.(Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)
Zaccheo says students who have been through the program as fourth- or fifth-graders talk about its impact or want to become BioSITE leaders themselves.
“There’s a mentorship between the high school students and the elementary students,” he said. “They get so much from watching them as role models, and you hope that connection is something they take with them outside of BioSITE.”
CELEBRATE THE 408: The sixth annual San Jose Day celebration is taking place Saturday with a street fair in Japantown. It will include live music and dance performances, an art exhibition, food trucks and local vendors and a huge art exhibition at Empire Seven Studios, 525 N. Seventh St.
The free, nonprofit event, which runs from noon to 6 p.m., also caps off the first week of #WeCreate408, a prompt-driven challenge throughout the month of April that aims to bring out the creativity in San Jose residents. The activities Saturday will include a workshop with San Jose Creative Ambassador Rayos Magos on a printmaking process called a collagraph.
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You can get more information on San Jose Day at www.sanjoseday.org and check out WeCreate408 at wecreate408.org.
COLLECTOR’S EDITION: It’s South First Fridays this week, and there are some good opportunities for art collectors at the monthly art walk through and around downtown San Jose’s SoFA district. It’ll be a great chance to get a last look at the Works/San Jose Community Art Auction exhibition at Open San Jose before the auction takes place Saturday night. You can also get a first look at MACLA‘s “Latinx Art Now!” auction exhibition, which opens Friday night in advance of that popular auction on May 18. And while you’re at MACLA, 510 S. First St., be sure to check out the Bay Area music ensemble Bululú, which will perform at the Castellano Playhouse at 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Friday.
Get the full South First Fridays lineup and a walking map at www.southfirstfridays.com.