WMS Altitude Program teaches students how to make maple syrup

By Masha Yurkevich

While some classrooms use textbooks to teach a lesson, Altitude, an alternative pathway program at Windham Middle School (WMS), used maple syrup collecting to teach its students.

Windham Middle School Altitude students gather during a 
lesson in making maple syrup. Front, from left, are 
Constance Sawyer, Mckenna Grass-Goodwin, Ava 
Atherton, Aliana Richardson, Finn Shinchfield, Logan
Partridge, and Lisa Anderson. Back, from left, are
Autumn Carlsen Cook, Angelina Malan, Elijah Fox,
Caleb Warner, Illijah Veilleux, and Allison Muir.
SUBMITTED PHOTO

Altitude is not your typical classroom setting; it is an alternative pathway program at WMS that focuses on service, experiential learning, and community building, aiming to create more hands-on learning opportunities for students who may find the traditional school setting challenging.

As maple syrup season was drawing closer, Altitude teachers Lisa Anderson, Autumn Carlsen Cook and Allison Muir decided to use this opportunity to teach their seventh grade Altitude students a variety of lessons, some of which include science, math, history, and the natural world.

Prior to going outside, students learned about the sugaring process and had guest speaker Scott Dunn from Dunn Family Farm speak to them about the task of collecting and boiling maple syrup. They learned about how to identify healthy maple trees, understanding the timing of sap flow, proper tapping techniques, and basic sap handling and boiling procedures to ensure a good quality syrup.

Then, the students walked around campus, marking off and tapping fifteen maple trees and plotting their locations on a map.

Mathematics was incorporated as the students collected data from the amount of sap they got from each tree and learned about how many taps a tree can have depending on its diameter and size. They had about 22 taps in total.

While outside, Altitude set up a “kitchen,” which consisted of four propane heaters to boil the sap for it to become maple syrup.

A group of students collected buckets of sap from their designated trees, pouring the sap into a 50-gallon barrel, which was then poured into pots and put on the heaters, carefully being monitored by the watchful eyes of another group of students.

Each pot was set at a different temperature, and the students observed the changes that were happening in each pot as the sap began to change color and get closer to the finished product, carefully taking the temperature until it reached 219°F, which is the finishing temperature of maple syrup.

“We wanted to give the students an authentic avenue for them to learn about social studies and culture, how did indigenous people first think to tap trees, as well as some Maine geography,” says Allison Muir, an Altitude teacher. “We compared ancient practices to present day modern practices, and also learned about the ecology of a tree, why does it produce sap, and why do we tap it at this time of year.”

Originally, Altitude wanted to incorporate more classroom curriculum, but once they got started, they quickly found out that they would be spending more time outside working on the sap. Teachers had to improvise, often taking the sap home to finish boiling excess water in order to speed up the process for students to then get to a finished product.

The students were able to be hands-on and used tools to tap the trees and hooked up the hosing to the tree, using teamwork to collect sap.

To see if the syrup was ready, the students either used a hydrometer to test the density of the sugar in the sap or used a thermometer, waiting until the liquid reached a temperature of 219°F.

“Once the temperature gets to 218°F, things happen really fast,” says student Aliana Richardson.

As a temperature reached 219°F, the students took the pot off the heat and filtered the syrup, and they agreed that this was a fun learning experience, and that they discovered many new things.

“Stay focused and pay attention,” said one student, Elijah Fox, to sum up the entire experience.

All the students agreed that attentiveness, hard work and teamwork was essential to making the best quality syrup. While in class the students learned that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, and while outside they learned that it depends on the type of maple tree from which the sap is taken.

The students also got to make pancakes, learning different measuring skills and cooking techniques, and then enjoyed their hard work of maple-syrup collecting with some fresh pancakes.

Altitude teachers hope to continue this learning experience next year. <