Stream Team is a club for both high school and middle school students, who enjoy being outdoors and helping their community. Focusing on their hometown, students in Stream Team do a variety of activities that help better the community. While monitoring streams is a big part of what Stream Team does, they also pick up trash along Highway 125 and participate in the Shoe Box for Soldiers.
Coming together, middle school and high school students who are looking to better their environment join Stream Team. Meeting from 3:15 to 4:15 on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, these students study proper stream monitoring. They are supervised by Patricia Schnakenburg and Lindsay Martin, who help the students learn about the streams and what they should be looking for when they actually go and monitor the stream. Schnakenburg states, “The kids benefit by learning to be conscious of our surroundings, and taking care of our rivers, streams, and environment as a whole.” Stream monitoring is an important stewardship project conducted by citizen environmental groups across the United States. Stream monitors collect data on the quality and the aquatic life in the stream, and use that data to assess the health of that stream.
Stream Team is not just about monitoring streams. Another thing that they do to help better the Fair Grove community is twice a year they go out and pick up trash along Highway 125. They join forces with the community around Christmas time to put together shoe boxes that will be sent to soldiers across seas. This shoe boxes contain letters and goods that will help the soldiers feel more comfortable while serving away from home. As a reward for all the hard work the students put in, the stream will go on a few field trips if time allows. Previous places they have visited include Bennett Springs and Valley Water Mill Park.