EcoEducation: Preserve Monarchs & Pollinators While Improving Literacy

The Monarch Sister Schools Program supports habitat restoration in schoolyards, hands-on learning for students in their outdoor classroom, and cultural exchange via online platforms like Skype or Zoom. 

 

Herbicide use on farms in the U.S. and Canada is destroying habitat while illegal logging in Mexico is destroying  the monarch's wintering habitat.  The result is a drastic decline in the monarch population of North American.

 

Through hands-on projects, students learn about the habitat, life cycle and amazing migration of the Monarchs, while collaborating across borders on projects to restore habitat for future Monarch generations.

 

In the U.S. the ‘vehicle’ of habitat restoration is the planting and maintenance of a Butterfly Habitat Garden by students.  At schools in Mexico, the ‘vehicle’ is the creation of a schoolyard Tree Nursery to produce native tree saplings to reforest logged areas of Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve.

 

U.S. schools can partner with a ‘sister school’ located inside of Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve and, in the process, engage in a vibrant cultural exchange, enhanced by class-to-class Skype sessions in which students learn presentations skills as they exchange information on their respective Monarch habitat restoration projects. These exchanges inspire interest in the other’s history, geography, and language. PenPal exchanges are also available.