Tahoma Leadership Students Present The Second Annual Community Screening of the Watershed Report

Featuring inspirational short videos on positive sustainability trends in the 28 cities and 13 school districts of our watershed address.

Co-hosts: City of Maple Valley, Tahoma School District, and Friends of the Cedar River Watershed

WHEN: Friday January 13, 7:00 Doors open at 6:30. Arrive early for best seats!

WHERE: Tahoma Middle School Auditorium - 24425 SE 216th Way Maple Valley

RSVP: FREE but RSVP so we can get a head count!

Rebecca Sayre, rebecca@cedarriver.org For info call: 206-297-8141

About the Screening

For the second year in a row, the City of Maple Valley, Tahoma School District and Friends of the Cedar River Watershed will co-host a Community Screening of the annually updated Watershed Report.

Narrated entirely by local high school students, the Watershed Report is an inspirational series of short videos that track and update positive sustainability trends in the 13 school districts and 28 cities of the greater Cedar River/Lake Washington Watershed.

Tahoma students applied to be part of the Watershed Report Leadership Team which now includes 22 highly motivated students from ten different high schools representing seven school districts plus the private school network within the boundaries of our watershed.

Leadership students receive over 100 hours of training in public policy, project management and public speaking via “Watershed College” and innovative approach to 21st Century teaching and learning centered on inquiry, systems thinking and community problem solving.

“I love being part of the Watershed Report Leadership Team because it gives students like me the feeling that we can make a difference,” says Cassandra Houghton, a junior at Tahoma High School. “The ability to use real solutions to solve real problems is not always given to young adults.”

Other Tahoma students on the Leadership Team include: Conor Hammond, Shanan Hopp, Gabe Hopp, Jennifer Larson, Austin Olsen, Clara Tibbetts, Jayaram Ravi and Kendall von Michalofski.

Piloted in 2009, the Watershed Report is an innovative program from the Friends of the Cedar River Watershed, a non-profit that engages thousands of volunteers in habit restoration along the Cedar River.

Last fall the Watershed Report received a standing ovation before a crowd of 200 community leaders at the Seattle REI Premiere Screening. Since the premiere, the Watershed Report has been presented to King County, Department of Ecology, Cedar Grove Compost, Cascade Water Alliance, Miller-Hull Architects, Renton Rotary, McKinstry, and in numerous classrooms.

Martha Kongsgaard, appointed by the Governor to Chair the Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council, commented, “This work is important and powerful and we need to get it into the hands of decision makers and school kids alike. It’s going to help us as a region embrace a common, durable destiny. The Watershed Report is not just a report or a living textbook on the adult world of policy. These young leaders are setting the terms of the debate and heading us in a new direction, into a new framework for the future.”

On Friday January 13, the Watershed Report comes to Maple Valley for a free community screening at the Tahoma Middle School Auditorium. The program will start at 7:00. Doors open at 6:30 but a crowd is expected. City staff and dozens of teachers will be inviting students and families to share this community learning opportunity.

Tahoma High School students will emcee the screening and facilitate audience questions and comments. The evening will also include opportunities to hear from both the school district and the city on positive advances in sustainability practices in our own backyard.

“The Watershed Report is exciting for us because the Tahoma School District is featured as a leader among the 13 school districts in the watershed,” reports Nancy Skerritt, Tahoma School District Assistant Superintendent. “We are really pleased that so many of our students have an opportunity to apply the thinking skills and Habits of Mind that our new curriculum stand on sustainability encourages.”

“The City of Maple Valley is honored to co-host this community-wide screening,” enthuses local farmer and City Engineer, David Casey. “I had a chance to preview all of the short video segments on the Watershed Report DVD and was incredibly impressed with the quality of the presentations provided by the young narrators, our future citizens and decision makers.”

What is the Watershed Report?

Under the direction of Peter Donaldson, student leaders in grades 9-12 collaborate with professionals to produce a series of short video reports that track sustainability trends across multiple sectors within the watershed, including school districts, city government, business development and habitat restoration efforts.

Leadership youth are recruited from all 13 school districts in the watershed. Selected leaders receive training in project management, policy analysis, public speaking, filmmaking and social media marketing.

The strategy behind the Watershed Report includes five key elements.

Accurate, data-driven messages are culled from the annual reports of city governments, school districts and agencies, supplemented with targeted surveys and interviews with key personnel.

Updated annually, the Watershed Report is broken into short segments suitable for school seminars, public meetings, TV and the web.

Well informed youth are the only narrators. There are no expert interviews or adult speakers. The style is charming, fast paced and informative. Students work with professionals to research the data, analyze trends and narrate the message.

Only positive trends and leading edge efforts are featured, generating a gentle competition among peers in local government, schools and businesses. People are naturally drawn to good ideas that are working.

The three new state standards for environmental and sustainability education serve as the pedagogical backbone for the Watershed Report. The Watershed Report supports hundreds of educators integrating inquiry, systems thinking and community problem solving. The standards are as follows:

1. Understands the relationship between ecological, social and economic systems.

2. Understands the relationship between the natural and built environments.

3. Understands the role of civic responsibility in sustainability.

Tahoma School District is leading the state of Washington in integrating these standards into the core curriculum.

“I got involved with this program when the whole idea of this video was simply a rough idea when Peter came to my class in 9th grade! I am a senior now. This organization has been the first group I've been a part of that I can say I've felt like we are making an impact. At school I'm in band. I am in sports. I am in national honors society. But the experience of working on the Watershed Report has been drastically different. The feeling of being a colleague and the professionalism of the issues at hand is irreproducible. I've had opportunities to see so many different organizations and meet such fascinating, involved, caring people that overall I have effectively changed my life goals.” - Clara Tibbetts, Class of 2012, Tahoma High School.

Second Annual Community Screening of the Watershed Report

Friday January 13, 7:00 Doors open at 6:30. Arrive early for best seats! RSVP: Rebecca Sayre, rebecca@cedarriver.org For info call: 206-297-8141