Students in high school science and math classes at Omaha formed a Stream Team under the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission’s sponsorship over a year ago. Stream Teams are volunteers who adopt a portion of a stream to monitor, clean up litter, work on stabilization, or improve fish habitat. It is a program of river, stream, and watershed conservation. There are about 20 official Stream Teams now working in Marion, Boone, and Baxter counties.

Omaha students planned to monitor Bear Creek near Point 34 of Bull Shoals Lake. As students gather data to become part of the AG&FC database, their work with the database requirements provide practice in math. Science teachers said students could also study the local streams as to their chemical, zoological and botanical features.

“We would also like to instill an environmental conscience in our students by allowing them to actually see and monitor the effects we have on our natural resources,” teacher Donna Macri said.

High school classes taking part in the environmental program include environmental and physical science, biology, algebra, advanced math, chemistry, principles of technology, and physics.

“Students learn and remember so much more anytime we can relate science and math concepts to real life applications,” said Macri.

South Shore Foundation contributed toward the program to improve the Omaha High School math and science departments with a grant of over $20,000 in 2002. South Shore Foundation is the charitable foundation of Northern Arkansas Telephone Company of Flippin.