Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge Deputy Refuge Manager Doug Staller and Education Specialist Brian McCaffery have taken advantage of a unique opportunity to promote the Director's goal of "Connecting People with Nature."  Bethel Regional High School runs a "Friday Clubs" program.  Every Friday afternoon, members of the Bethel community visit the high school for the last period of the school day to engage students in non-traditional, extracurricular activities.  At the beginning of the semester, students were able to choose from dozens of proposed clubs, ranging from ping-pong to confectionary cuisine to Eskimo dance. 

Staller and McCaffery decided to lead clubs that use the arts to reawaken their students' connection with nature.  Deputy Manager Staller is supervising a class on wildlife art. With the help of live mounts, such as a Spectacled Eider and an Emperor Goose from the refuge's visitor center, Staller has led a series of Friday workshops in which students have done simple sketches, full illustrations, and multi-media collages.  “We started out focused on the Junior Duck Stamp competition and the Alaska Migratory Bird Calendar contest, but the path broadened as the students' personal interests came out," Staller explained.  "We also found that it was important for folks in the school community to see that the Service is not just an anonymous public agency, but rather made up of real people,” Staller added.

Meanwhile Education Specialist McCaffery encourages students to express themselves through poetry.  Weather permitting, his class takes brief field trips to the edge of the tundra to observe nature and take notes; they then return to the classroom to write about what they saw and felt using poetic forms such as haiku, limerick, rap and free verse.  "Nature doesn't necessarily have to be the topic of their poems," McCaffery noted.  "It can simply be the setting for some event they describe, or it can be a metaphor for something they're feeling.  The goal is to have them really sense nature, and then find a way to describe it as they express themselves in verse.