How Water Connects Upstate and Downstate Students Through Environmental Education

By Robert Brune

MARGARETVILLE — In New York State, the journey of clean drinking water is more than just a marvel of engineering, it’s also a powerful educational tool that brings together students from vastly different communities. More than 9.5 million residents of New York City depend on a vast network of 19 reservoirs and three lakes, stretching nearly 2,000 square miles across the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. This shared natural resource serves as the foundation for the Green Connections program, a unique initiative led by the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC), which links students and teachers from upstate rural schools and downstate urban districts. Targeting grades 4 through 12, WAC trains educators and facilitates partnerships between schools that might otherwise have no interaction, encouraging students to engage with environmental science while also learning about one another’s way of life. These connections create opportunities for academic enrichment, emotional growth, and a deeper civic understanding, all rooted in the real-world importance of protecting and appreciating the natural environment. Through letter exchanges, virtual meetings, and hands-on workshops, students from both regions form lasting bonds, proving that while their day-to-day lives may differ, they are united by the waters that sustain them both.

Over the past seven years, Margaretville Central School 5th grade teacher Linda Pesa has been partnered up with NYC PS 376 teacher Jeanne Salchi of Long Island. Throughout each year students participate in WAC Zoom meetings led by a forestry instructor Tyler Van Fleet, students also further develop bonds with their partner school students with three rounds of pen pal letters, and both schools visit each other on field trips to participate in environmental workshops. Both teachers Pesa and Salchi relate how meaningful this experience is for their students, as some children at both ends don’t otherwise have the opportunity to travel outside the area in which they live.

Last Friday the MCS students gathered at the Shavertown Trail Head Pepacton boat launch area with a 30’ colorful diagram created by students of how the reservoir water travels from the northern Catskills to their homes in the city. It was a rare day free of rain with warmer temperatures and sun shining. The touring bus of the NYC students, teachers, and parents approached the MCS group with loud cheers and ‘WELCOME PS 376’!

Within a few minutes of the teachers, students, and WAC instructors greeting each other, they broke out into workshop groups learning about how the forest filters rain water, making its way into the streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs winding up into the aqueduct tunnel system traveling 125 miles to NYC. The buses loaded back up and headed to the Margaretville Fairgrounds for a hotdog and hamburger lunch after the first set of workshops. When the students finished eating, they broke up into three groups for another set of workshops planned by Van Fleet. One was a lesson on water filtration using leaves and sticks, a scavenger hunt, building small fairy huts out of found objects. Next Van Fleet guided students into the riverbed to find macro invertebrates such as snails, worms, larva, may flies, and cray fish. She explained to the students, “When we find signs of life in the water, it means the water is a healthy environment.” The students suited up in waders following their instructors into the shallows of the East Branch of the Delaware behind the fairgrounds.

What began as an exchange rooted in environmental education has blossomed into something much deeper, lasting friendships, greater empathy, and a shared responsibility for the land and water that connect upstate and downstate communities. Through the Green Connections program, students who may never have met otherwise are given the opportunity to step into each other’s world, learn from diverse perspectives, and witness firsthand the vital role of nature in sustaining daily life. The day spent learning about forest filtration, writing pen pal letters, exploring riverbeds for aquatic life, and simply sharing a meal, becomes more than a field trip. It becomes a formative experience. For many students, this is their first time outside their home region, and for all of them, it’s a rare chance to understand how interconnected we truly are. Programs like this don’t just educate, they inspire a new generation to become thoughtful stewards of their environment and compassionate citizens of their state.