Quileute CASE
Winter Site Visit to the Quileute Tribal School
January 14-15, 2025
Blog post written by Abbey Moore, Alyssa Iverson, & Madeleine Lucas
At the beginning of the new year, the Quileute CASE team traveled to La Push, Washington for our winter site visit to the Quileute Tribal School. This year the topic of our K-12 geoscience curriculum is geomorphology!
To cross over to the Olympic Peninsula, we took a short but beautiful ferry ride to Kingston. In Kingston we made a pit stop for coffee and food – you can’t road trip on an empty stomach! From there we drove towards La Push, stopping by the shimmering shore of Lake Crescent. We got to see the steep mountains, colorful Madrona trees, and even a few bald eagles! After more driving, we arrived in Forks and checked into our room at UW’s Olympic Natural Resource Center. We still had a couple hours of daylight, and what better way to spend them than to go to the beach? We traveled to Rialto Beach, just north of La Push to familiarize ourselves with the surrounding landscapes. There we saw breathtaking islands, including Little James Island. We also saw many colourful rocks on the beach, naturally tumbled by the waves that crashed onto the shore. Once the sun began to set, we headed back to our room in Forks to rehearse our lessons for the next day at the Quileute Tribal School.
At the Quileute Tribal School, we were given the opportunity to combine science with art. Middle and high school students gathered in Miss Alice’s science classroom, where we introduced ourselves and explained what the word “Geomorphology” means: “the shape of the land”. We went over some notable geomorphic features in La Push, including laˀwáwat (beach), k’ʷáya (river), and t̓siḳ̓áti (land, mountain). The students then divided into groups to create one of these geomorphic features with clay. We saw many creative interpretations of each of the formations, from tall mountains with a gorge in their center, to a river cutting through a field of mushrooms and trees. Other students applied local sites to their sculptures, creating Little James Island and accounting for the numerous large logs and rocks on the shores of the nearby beaches. The wonderful clay landscapes are now dried, allowing the students to paint and complete their masterpieces!
During our visit, we also tabled at the QTS Youth Careers & College Fair to share about our experience as UW students and about pathways into STEM fields.
