Burlington Standard

For seniors in the Rubenstein School, NR 206 is a community-based learning course, which pairs groups of students with community partners to tackle a problem. The goals of each project differ based on the needs and visions from the partner and the students. The Rock Point School—an independent, co-ed boarding high school in Burlington, Vermont, has been one such partner for many years.

Rock Point is a 130-acre property owned by the Vermont Episcopal Church located on Lake Champlain. Chuck Courcy, the property manager, and Gus Buchanan, the school’s history teacher, have developed experiential environmental learning programs such as maple sugaring, beekeeping, and camping. In the sugaring program, students participate in the entire process, from tapping the sugar maple trees, to harvesting the sap, to boiling and bottling the syrup. To better serve the experiential learning programs at Rock Point School, the spring 2022 NR 206 group produced a small-scale gravity tubing system. The tubing system will add more taps to the current sugar bush, reduce the amount of manual labor needed to retrieve and dump buckets, and provide an education to staff and faculty about the sciences and art of tubing systems. 

During this particular sugaring season, the NR 206 tubing system installation project just so happened to land on the same week that the Rubenstein School’s NR 2 class—taught by Walter Poleman and Christopher Brooks—was heading over to Rock Point for their maple sugaring field lab. The timing could not have been more perfect, even more so considering the temperatures that week had created ideal conditions for sap flow.

NR 2 is a course that all Rubenstein School first year students take. This serendipitous overlap provided a unique opportunity to have first years learn from seniors. After a brief lecture and demonstration from a few of the NR 206 group members, NR 2 students were enthusiastic to try aspects of the tubing process themselves. They were unsure how exactly the sap moved through the tubing, so group members explained how gravity and a natural  vacuum force is utilized, creating positive pressure to force sap downhill to a single open airway. Many students jumped at the opportunity to drill a hole, hammer in the tap, and connect the tubing themselves. And even more excitedly positioned their heads beneath the flowing taps to receive fresh sap.

Learning about sugar maple identification and composition of sugar bushes emphasizes a sense of place for UVM students and illustrates the land-use history that is unique to Vermont. The NR 206 students had a goal of adding a fun and informative method of learning to the individualized, nature-based education for students at Rock Point in the future. Their ability to share the experience with fellow Rubenstein School students demonstrated the direct, observable benefits of providing hands-on learning in an outdoor setting.

The project will likely be expanded with the help of NR 206 groups in future semesters, and this first plot may act as a guide to expand tubing on the property if the members of Rock Point choose to do so. Expansion of the tubing system will reduce the amount of difficult work that the students have to do themselves by carrying and dumping buckets of sap. But most importantly it will enhance the experiential education programs at Rock Point for years to come.

_{Source: https://www.uvm.edu/news/rsenr/rubenstein-seniors-and-first-years-share-learning-rock-point}