“Instead of it being something that is us against them, it brings it into the place of a discussion.”

In a session of a little over 90 minutes, students rotated through three stations at the Spencer family property, where Cheadle talked about watersheds, drainage and non-point-source pollution.

Blue Thumb educator Kim Shaw offered a closer look at the fish and crawdads, and educator Becky Zawalski introduced them to macro invertebrates that are sensitive to pollution, like the hellgrammite, water penny and “right-handed” snail (which breathes with gills) — all of which live in Spring Creek.

Cheadle’s scales worked side by side with a watershed model she used to illustrate how every person can play a role in minimizing pollution by not littering or reading instructions carefully when using insecticides or fertilizers. She let students add elements to the model landscape — oil from cars, loose soil from gardening, litter, pesticides and fertilizers — and then added “rain” to the equation to wash those elements into the model’s stream and lake.

“If we don’t have a connection with nature it’s easy to forget that we share the planet, and that’s one of the things that we’re able to do when we look at the bugs on the rocks and we look at the fish in the stream,” Cheadle said.