Student Paleontology Field Experience - 2022

Our goal is to bring this passion and energy back to our students in a way that empowers them and future generations.  Together we are creating a vision that makes that dream and fascination so many have once had, into a reality. 

Students at Nease High School are taking on the responsibility of traveling to the Badlands of Montana to prospect, and uncover prehistoric fossils with a student-centered organization, Adventure-360.  Our goal is to take students on an experiential journey.  We want to see the classroom boundaries expand into the vastness of the Badlands of Montana. And this is our plan to see this vision come to fruition:

• Paleontology Field Experience
• Take students into the field to learn STEM concepts covering paleontology, stratigraphy, climate, and engineering
• Empower students with skills like communication in the field, taking care of each other, being aware of your surroundings, responsibility, accountability, recording data, proper documentation, and learning from challenges they will face.
• Preparing fossils in the field for transportation back to the lab at Nease High School.
• Learning while in the field the focus and relevance of other subjects that play a bug part in fossil research and discovery.  Including art (we have been joined by artists in the field before), theater (additionally cinema), business (permits, regulations, entrepreneurship), and communication.

• Impact on our future generations
• Our students in the field will bring back fossils that they uncovered themselves and learn to properly prepare them in a lab environment from experts and experienced preparers.
• With this knowledge, these students will teach younger students how to properly prepare fossils for research, and display. 
• Our vision includes creating a fossil gallery at Nease High School that will be used for display and research for ALL students.  Not just Nease High School, but our neighboring schools, our district and the surrounding counties and states.
• To host STEM nights that include research and fossil discovery led by experts in the field.
• Establishing relevant and authentic connections between the science of paleontology and other subjects taught in education.  Possibly creating cross-curricular planning with teachers in other subjects
• Creating an exciting atmosphere that encourages students for many generations that their dream of uncovering a dinosaur can be a reality
• Presenting to our elementary and middle school aged students in a unique way that allows the students to become the expert. 

Our vision and plan for this year and the impact on the future generations is ambitious.  This experience has opened so many doors for other students that I’ve led, and to be able to open the door at Nease High School, our amazing and growing county and state would be an honor and privilege. 

This includes our younger generation of elementary students.  With a supply of fossils that are prepared, we can explore other options like creating a hands-on showcase for elementary teachers to take their students to that would be curated by our students, or designing a field experience that can travel to other locations that is setup for students to simulate a real dig site.  The possibilities are endless for bother our older and younger generations. 

Students that are able to join us in the field will benefit greatly from their experience.  But that’s not where the learning stops.  They will take that experience and share it with hundreds and potentially thousands of students for may years to come.  The goal is to equip students to be confident learners that are not afraid to learn from their failures, and to teach others from those moments.  We believe that our vision will present an incredibly unique, authentic and exciting opportunity have an impact for so many people, no matter what age. 

In reality, this idea and vision does not initiate or grow successfully without our community support.  We not only want our community’s support in this ambitious journey, we need it.  Our community has been incredibly supportive for so many years in our school district, and the facilities and distinctions are part of that proof.  To see a dream like this become a reality, we humbly realize that our community is the backbone to make this dream become a reality.  This isn’t a one-year impact – this is an impact that can alter a student’s life, career and legacy.  It’s our honor to present this vision to you and we hope that you join us on this amazing and ground-breaking journey!