Members of the Scripps Ranch community are making an effort to help the declining population of monarch butterflies thrive. (photo by Anthony Eusebio)
Teacher brings learning to life
First grade teacher Amy Boelzle is making education fun and interactive for students at Dingeman Elementary School while also working to support the environment.
Voted Teacher of the Year in 2017-2018 at Dingeman Elementary, she manages a butterfly garden at the school that she incorporates in to her life science lessons, and she has taken it a step further to expand the effort to the Scripps Ranch community.
Boelzle inherited the garden from Sara Church, a former third grade teacher at Dingeman, who initiated many science and conservation activities at the school prior to her retirement. Among her contributions were creation of the Green Team – a group of third graders responsible for recycling at the school – as well as building a butterfly habitat, and installing vegetable planters around the school. Given her love of nature and passion for gardening at home, Boelzle partnered with Church when the project first began, picking out most of the plants that would be included in the garden.
“When my husband and I did the landscaping for our home, I knew I wanted a butterfly and hummingbird garden, so milkweed and other perennials became staples,” Boelzle said. “When Sara (Church) retired a few years ago, I took on the management of the (school) garden.”
Boelzle selected milkweed as a plant of choice for the school garden, as well, because it has a low water requirement and attracts monarch butterflies. She explained that the monarch only lays its eggs on milkweed, and the caterpillars exclusively eat this plant before creating their chrysalis.
“This spring, we had an abundance of monarch caterpillars on the plant,” Boelzle said. “Students were very excited to observe them as they ate their way through the plants, and sometimes we had to transplant the caterpillars to other areas to have enough food.”
At the end of last school year, Boelzle gave milkweed seeds to her students in hopes that they would plant a garden at home, helping the monarchs to continue to thrive beyond the school’s campus. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the population of monarch butterflies has plummeted by 90 percent in the past 20 years due primarily to climate change and pesticides, which threaten their sole host plant. The organization filed a petition to protect monarchs as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, and a decision is expected by June 2019.
Abraham Eusebio is a second grader at Dingeman who was in Boelzle’s class last year. His family planted the seeds received from his teacher and they have enjoyed the experience this summer.
“We had four successful monarch butterflies that we raised,” Eusebio said. “I even got to keep the empty chrysalis; it’s very fragile.”
Eusebio’s parents have also found the process rewarding. “It’s been neat to see butterflies coming to our garden, caterpillars eating milkweed, butterflies laying eggs and thriving,” said Marian Eusebio, Abraham’s mother. “It’s fun to see and learn about the different stages of the butterfly together as a family. I’ve learned a lot, too.”
The Eusebio family is not the only one in town that finds raising monarch butterflies rewarding. Bettina Mitteer is a Scripps Ranch resident who has been raising monarchs at home for three years. She has also been known to give away milkweed and monarch caterpillars to her neighbors through her local Buy Nothing Facebook group, complementing it with mentoring and strategies for maintaining a successful habitat.
“Raising monarchs was an accidental hobby,” Mitteer said. “I bought and planted the milkweed, and the monarchs started landing on it and laying their eggs. Because I’ve been successful, it has been very rewarding and that was something I wanted to share with my neighbors. Particularly because the population is declining, I feel it’s something we can do to make a difference, one butterfly at a time.”
Anthony Eusebio, Abraham’s father, said that Boelzle has done a great job of educating students on the importance of the environment and ways to care for it. Looking ahead, Boelzle hopes to get even more parents involved as she, along with students and her fellow educators, work to continue conservation and beautification efforts at Dingeman Elementary and in the surrounding community.
Howdy this is somewhat of off topic but I was wondering if
blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML.
I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding expertise so I wanted
to get advice from someone with experience.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Pretty! This was a really wonderful post. Many thanks for
providing this info.
This website was… how do I say it? Relevant!! Finally I’ve found something which helped me.
Thanks!
Heya! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any problems with
hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended
up losing several weeks of hard work due to no backup.
Do you have any solutions to protect against hackers?
After looking over a few of the blog posts on your website, I seriously appreciate your technique of writing a blog.
I saved as a favorite it to my bookmark website
list and will be checking back soon. Take a look at my website as
well and let me know what you think.
My partner and I stumbled over here different website
and thought I should check things out. I like what
I see so now i am following you. Look forward to looking over your web page repeatedly.
It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d certainly donate to this excellent blog!
I guess for now i’ll settle for book-marking and adding your
RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to fresh updates and will share this blog with
my Facebook group. Chat soon!
I quite like reading a post that can make men and women think.
Also, thanks for allowing for me to comment!
Hi would you mind letting me know which hosting company you’re
working with? I’ve loaded your blog in 3 completely different web browsers and I
must say this blog loads a lot quicker then most.
Can you suggest a good internet hosting provider at a fair price?
Thanks, I appreciate it!
What’s up everyone, it’s my first go to see at this site, and post is
in fact fruitful in support of me, keep up posting these articles or reviews.
Having read this I believed it was very enlightening. I appreciate you
spending some time and effort to put this content together.
I once again find myself spending a lot of time both reading and
posting comments. But so what, it was still worthwhile!
When I initially commented I seem to have clicked
on the -Notify me when new comments are added- checkbox and from
now on every time a comment is added I get four emails
with the exact same comment. Is there a way you are able to remove me from that service?
Thank you!
Good day! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering
if you knew where I could find a captcha plugin for my comment form?
I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having problems finding one?
Thanks a lot!
My brother suggested I may like this website. He was entirely right.
This post actually made my day. You cann’t believe just how much time I had spent for this information! Thank you!
hello there and thank you for your information – I have definitely picked up something new from right here.
I did however expertise a few technical issues using this
website, since I experienced to reload the website many times previous to I could get
it to load correctly. I had been wondering if your
web hosting is OK? Not that I’m complaining,
but sluggish loading instances times will often affect your placement in google and can damage
your high-quality score if ads and marketing with Adwords.
Anyway I’m adding this RSS to my email and could look out for a lot more
of your respective exciting content. Make sure you update this again very soon.
I’m impressed, I have to admit. Rarely do I come across a blog that’s
both equally educative and interesting, and without a doubt, you have hit the nail on the head.
The problem is something that too few people
are speaking intelligently about. Now i’m very happy I stumbled across this in my hunt for something concerning this.
It’s amazing designed for me to have a web site, which is good in favor of my knowledge.
thanks admin
Greetings! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d ask.
Would you be interested in exchanging links or maybe guest writing a
blog post or vice-versa? My website addresses a lot of the same
subjects as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each
other. If you’re interested feel free to shoot
me an email. I look forward to hearing from you!
Superb blog by the way!
Does your website have a contact page? I’m having a tough time
locating it but, I’d like to shoot you an e-mail. I’ve got some suggestions for
your blog you might be interested in hearing. Either way,
great site and I look forward to seeing it grow over time.