PBS Wisconsin Education’s Field Notes on Climate series helps students in grades 6-12 explore how climate change affects their communities, while learning about how people are taking action to address it. In a recent episode—Improving watersheds with water quality testing—Wisconsin 2025 Teacher of the Year Brian Counselman takes students from Malcolm Shabazz City High School, in Madison, to Starkweather Creek to investigate local water quality issues firsthand.
As a science teacher and project-based learning coordinator, Counselman emphasizes the importance of helping students understand environmental challenges in their own communities so they can become advocates for protecting local waterways.
“If you don’t know a thing, you’re not going to care about it. If you don’t care about it, you’re not going to protect it,” Counselman says.
This episode, one of eight episodes in the first season, examines how changing rainfall patterns are affecting Wisconsin’s lakes and rivers. It explores how stormwater runoff carries nutrients and pollutants into waterways, contributing to algal blooms and declining water quality. Through conversations with scientists, students, and community members, the episode looks at how watersheds connect our actions to the health of our lakes, and how local efforts, including citizen science, are helping monitor and protect these shared resources.
This content is sourced from
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
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