Reflection #1: Initial Thoughts – September 16, 2025 – You’ve made your implementation plan and started conducting some research. What are your plans for the semester? What have you learned so far about your topic? What has surprised you? What questions still remain?
My plans for the semester mainly include helping to make the students at the JJKFAN center more educated when it comes to the importance of biodiversity and greenspaces. I really want to come up with creative lesson plans and activities for them to do and I’m also excited to be able to first-hand research the soil and native plants surrounding JJKFAN because I believe that it will be interesting to both learn and teach. While I’ll mainly be working with JJKFAN, I am also excited to work at least somewhat with Heartlands to do the same. So far on my topic, I’ve learned about the different types of trees in the JJKFAN area, a couple examples of those being apple trees and japanese trees. I’ve also learned about the types of soil that those trees need to thrive. I hope that when I go to JJKFAN and get to test the soil and get more knowledge on what’s there that I can find a way to make sure that the different types of trees are able to thrive to the best of their ability as each of them have different needs. There’s also a chance that I could incorporate that into what I’m teaching the students, maybe making a long-term activity out of that as well. It did surprise me that there was such a variety of different trees. I was more expecting there to be 2-4 different types but there are 9 different types, all needing different types of soil with different pH levels. It makes me wonder how they all got there in the first place and how they’ve survived for as long as they have, since while there are similarities between the soils they need, there are still lots of differences. That’s another question that I can continue to research so that I can educate the students. When I go to JJKFAN and I am able to ask more about the data testing and sharing, I hope that there aren’t too many obstacles when it comes to testing. If so, I hope that there’s a chance that someone else could do the testing and I could use the data to continue on with the project, even though I wouldn’t be directing getting the data myself. Otherwise, even if I’m not able to get the data at all, I could still research and see if any studies have been done in the general area (or on the trees/soil in question at all) and use those resources to estimate what could be done for JJKFAN based on what has been done in other areas. Heartlands may be better when it comes to finding those resources since they study the flora around their site. I could also see what trees/soil are in their greenspace area and what all they have done to help their environment thrive. All around, I am excited for what’s to come this semester while working with both JJKFAN and Heartlands to educate the JJKFAN students and volunteers about the importance of greenspaces and biodiversity.
Reflection #2: Observation and Inference – October 14, 2025 – We’ve encountered a lot of changes this semester—as we have every semester! In this reflection, think about how your plans began, how they have changed, and where you hope to see your project develop. What are you enjoying? What are you realizing you don’t like? Where do you see these experiences informing how you do research/work moving forward?
At the beginning of the semester, the plans for my portion of the group project consisted of creating lesson plans and education aspects for the students at JJKFAN in support of their new outside facility. I was mostly focusing on the soil and surrounding flora and fauna in an effort to educate them on their local environments when it came to what those ecosystems were, how they’ve helped humans, and how we can help them. However, since we were no longer able to work with the students of JJKFAN, the plan pivoted. From now and moving forward, we’ll be directly helping JJKFAN to set up learning materials surrounding the area that they plan to set up the outside activities at. This will include informative plaques, study stands, and possibly more along the path that the students and other members of JJKFAN will be walking. I hope to also see the project develop into identifying the different natural flora surrounding the area that’s attracting wild animals. During our site visit, they mentioned that they were beginning to see many new animals and small rodents coming to the site and they wanted to know what was attracting them there so that they could help the ecosystem and growing community to flourish. I hope to be able to help them on that front as well. I also hope to be able to see how this project grows in the future and the people that it will continue to educate and impact as time goes on. I’m enjoying being able to work with the group and with JJKFAN to help educate others and give them a place to give back to their local ecosystems and make way for new human-nature relationships to form. I don’t think I’m realizing anything that I’m not liking just yet. For the most part, I’m enjoying what I am able to do and the good that I hope this project brings to the community within and outside of JJKFAN.
These experiences with the site visits and helping JJKFAN will impact how I do research and work moving forward in a positive way because I know what I will have to do to go out onto a site and really search for the root of a wicked problem (if there is one) and also do my best to provide solutions(s) to the best of my ability. I hope that in the future when I’m working in research groups that this experience will help me continue to help people, their communities, as well as their surrounding ecosystems. Within my career, I am going to be helping people advocate for what they need and educating those who aren’t in the same scenarios as the people I am trying to help. This experience is giving me the exposure I need to get the education part of that goal and learn what it means to help others become more aware of the triumphs and struggles that surround them in their very own biosphere that they probably don’t even know about.
Reflection #3: Self-Assessment – October 21, 2025 – You’ve completed a few site visits/Teams meetings. Hopefully, you are starting to understand your partners better, building trust, engaging in the work, and learning from your mistakes. Consider your self-presentation during your visits. Have you been confident, nervous, open to ideas, quick to judge? How have your behaviors influenced the interactions you had? What do you think you are doing well? What could you do better? Give examples and tell stories.
When it comes to the site visits and Teams meetings, I feel like I’ve presented myself both confidently and as more reserved depending on the scenario. During the Teams meetings, I felt as though I was the main ‘advocate’ for the group. I had most of what myself and the team wanted to do organized and listed for everyone to see so I was one of the best people to communicate how we were all feeling to JJKFAN and Heartlands. I was therefore more confident in what I was saying and doing as I had the knowledge of the group backing what I was saying. During the in-person visit, I felt that I was more reserved because at that point, while I knew what I wanted to do with my portion and how that would help with JJKFAN’s visit I didn’t 100% know what everyone else in the group was planning/what they wanted to do so I mainly kept quiet and spoke up when it was surrounding my portion of the project. In that scenario, I felt as if that was more helpful to the group to let someone else lead since I wasn’t fully aware of everyone’s preferences. I feel that these behaviors have influenced the interactions I’ve had with JJKFAN because it shows them that while I am able to take charge and advocate strongly for my group, I am also able to back down when I feel it’s necessary. It has also helped me further understand what it is that my contribution to the project is because I can get more insight through my behaviors or leading the group versus being more reserved.
Some things that I believe I’m doing well is keeping up with what I specifically am doing. In the past I feel that I have been too worried that everyone else knows what they’re doing and that left me with little time to figure out what I’m doing because I got too lost in everyone else’s work. This time though, I’ve been able to separate myself from their projects and truly immerse myself in my portion of the project which has in turn made the project more enjoyable for me because I’m doing something that I’m interested in, rather than helping other people with what they’re interested in. On the other hand, there are still things that I could do better on. One of those things would be to break up the project into smaller, more manageable parts. I feel that at many points when working through this project I have tried to do something really big in a small amount of time. While it’s good to know what the big picture is and be able to visualize the final result, getting to that final result isn’t something that can be done in just one or two days. Going forward, splitting up the work into smaller pieces that I can work on day-to-day would definitely help me in the long run when trying to get to that final result.
Data Collection – November 4, 2025
To collect the data of how to maintain the soil at JJKFAN and what can be done to help with the lead contamination of the soil I mainly looked at scientific articles and websites that focused on the methods that plants can help with lead contamination (processes such as phytoremediation). I chose this specific form of data collection because there wasn’t really a way for me to be able to go to the site and test the soil for myself. Because of this, I only had the estimated type of soil that was available online and what methods could be done to prevent lead (and other types) contamination. Additionally, when researching ways to maintain the soil once the lead contaminants are gone, I researched what types of compost should be used to revitalize the soil and keep it healthy. I found that for the specific type of soil found in the JJKFAN region, which is a mix of silt, loam, and clay, the best type of compost would be ones that introduce iron and phosphorus into the soil as it recovers from the lead contaminants. Using this, I then used a released list of flora are native to Illinois, sorted it by which ones are native to the St. Clair County County (where JJKFAN is located) and then sorted that list to which flora wouldn’t be negatively affected by excess iron and phosphorus. This is important because even though the compost would be helping the soil itself by providing nutrients like the iron and phosphorous, if the flora aren’t able to thrive due to the excess nutrients, they therefore wouldn’t be able to bring in the biodiversity of fauna that come along with planting those specific types of flora. Even though there is a growing ecosystem in the JJKFAN region, if the wrong nutrients are put into the soil or if there is excess that react negatively with the current flora and fauna, the biodiversity and ecosystem that is already there could begin to disappear.
While phytoremediation is an inexpensive and eco-friendly way to address the issue of lead contamination in the soil, it also takes much longer than it would take for them to dig up the contaminated soil and replace it instead. Because of this time delay, the best way to address the issue and introduce it to JJKFAN, would be by using the numbers and quantitative data to prove that the time delay wouldn’t be detrimental to the overall effectiveness of the process. The limitations of this would come from the soil itself and the flora already in the area. Although I researched what type of soil should be there, since the area surrounding JJKFAN commonly floods, there is a chance that certain aspects of the soil either corroded or, due to the lead contamination, the soil type changed. In addition to this, the flora already in the area that is supporting the up and coming ecosystem also needs to be able to thrive with the excess nutrients coming from the compost. If changes need to be made to the plan of which phytoremediation-able flora can be added into the ecosystem, that could also delay the process of phytoremediation.
Moving forward as I continue to collect data and implement it into the more educational parts of the project, I will continue to research into what other types of soil, compost, and fauna would be best for the JJKFAN region and how those choices may change due to how much the lead contamination and soil texture has changed over time. I will then be able to accurately calculate which parts can be affected by community work and through the guidance of the JJKFAN outdoor classroom.
Reflection #4: Data Collection – November 11, 2025 – You have now implemented some aspect of data collection by this date. You might have distributed a survey, hosted an interview, convened a focus group, or conducted an experiment. Describe the experience in detail. If you completed an annotated bibliography, perhaps you can compare what you have read about to what happened in our context. What has gone well or been instructive? What problems didn’t you foresee? What do you wish you’d done differently?
The aspect of data collection that I have implemented was going through research papers and maps of the soil texture and ecosystems in the East St. Louis area. As I went through these papers and maps, I observed the commonalities and the parts of each that were native to the East St. Louis area, specifically in St. Clair County. I found that the soil is known to be loam, clay, and silt and there are many native flora. I then took this information of the flora and compared it to a list of flora that can perform phytoremediation. Phytoremediation is the process whereby flora are able to remove lead and other contaminants in the soil by storing it within themselves. When I found common plants in each category (those that are native to East St. Louis and those that can perform phyremediation), I then looked at the soil itself. Since the soil in the JJKFAN area has lead contamination, there isn’t much already known about how to keep the soil healthy once it gets healthy. Based on the type of soil that is there, there are specific types of compost that would encourage the healthiness of the soil once the contaminants are removed. However, the process that the compost uses to ensure the health of the soil is that it adds more nutrients and vitamins into the soil. These excess elements can be increasingly detrimental to any flora planted in the area that does not require these extra nutrients. So, I then took the previous list of flora and analyzed which ones would do best with specific excess nutrients (iron and phosphorus).
The main problem that I didn’t foresee was getting specific information on the type of soil that is in the area. Since the JJKFAN area is a known flooding zone, there is a high chance that the type/amount of soil in the area has changed or been shifted to another area. If this is true, it would be harder to identify what type of nutrients the soil needs and what flora is able to be planted on the new type of soil. If I was able to find out the exact type of soil in the area through professional (and recent) soil testing, I would be able to be more specific on what the soil needs.
I’m not sure if there’s anything I would have done differently because I feel that I was very in depth and looked at many different sources before deciding the exact type of research that I wanted to do. Once I knew what type of data collection was needed, I was then able to once again be in depth and use all the resources available to me. In addition to that, I used many types of resources from research articles to Illinois soil maps sorted by county. If I were able to get professional and recent soil/water testing of the JJKFAN area then my data collection may be more accurate but since that was not available, I am still proud of the data collection that I was able to do.
Reflection #5: Wrapping Up – November 11, 2025 – We are coming to the end of this semester and will spend the next classes curating data for future usage in CODE320. Comment on your experiences in your on-site work. What did you learn about working with other people? What did you learn about yourself? Tell stories, be specific.
Through this semester, I’ve been able to work both on-site and off-site with people to help with the lead contamination and the educational slats for JJKFAN’s upcoming outdoor classroom. When on-site, my group and I were able to see the space that the outdoor northern campus was going to be put in as well as learn more about the current issues and wildlife in the northern part of JJKFAN. We were then shown the area that was being affected by the lead contamination in the soil, which led to my off-site work. My off-site work surrounded finding solutions to the contaminations as well as researching how to maintain the healthy soil once it was achieved. Though this portion was mainly a one-person project between myself and JJKFAN, I also worked with other people in my group on the educational side of research and creation. I helped to create the wording for the educational slats that are to be placed around the site of the northern campus. Through working with these people, I was able to learn more about how to collaborate when creating a product that is for people of a different age group, since the slats are designed to be mainly focused towards elementary schoolers and early middle schoolers. This will be helpful to me in the future because I will need the skills on how to adjust to different age groups and audiences when making products for groups of people. This has been a great starting point for learning these skills as we progress through our partnership with JJKFAN.
When it comes to learning more about myself, throughout this semester I was able to discover more interests I had when it comes to plants, soil, and what they can do for each other. Before now, I hadn’t put much thought into natural processes to get rid of lead pollution in soil (or other types of soil pollution/contamination). I, like many others, first thought of just removing the affected soil and replacing it with healthy soil. However, that can get expensive really quickly. Learning about phytoremediation and all the processes that are within it was especially interesting because it’s not something that I had researched or even heard of before researching for the northern campus. Without doing this research for JJKFAN, I may have never known about it or the good it can do for the environment. I’m excited for the future where we are able to implement these processes and slats into the campus and see the good that they can do for the community as well. The northern campus is something that I feel will truly benefit both the students as well as the adults and young adults in the area who want to learn more about their environment. If there’s a way to make them aware about natural processes such as phytoremediation, especially because they had a hand in making the northern campus possible, then that would be even better.