Students at Owendale-Gagetown schools are hoping to leave their mark on state history. 

Currently sitting in the Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee is Senate Bill 937. For the students of Owendale-Gagetown schools, this has been a yearlong process, hoping to establish something the state has not yet adopted — a state insect.

What started as a bit of curiosity after a jeopardy question for middle and high school science teacher Corey Harwood became a cross-curricular activity that kept students engaged all year.

“I was watching Jeopardy one night and one of the categories was on state insects,” Harwood said. “I thought I should look up and know what ours was and found out that Michigan is one of two states that has not adopted one.”

Harwood started talking about this with his students and peers but really got his seventh- and eighth-grade life science classes into researching potential insects that the state could adopt. He said that he had presenters come in and talk about bugs and showed them to his group of students. 

“They would come in and start researching all on their own,” Harwood said. “They were pretty eager to work on this. Normally with students, you have to drag them into it, but for this it has been awesome. They knew what they had to do and ran with it.”

The research lead to what Harwood described as almost their own presidential campaign for which bug to be used to represent the state. Pretty soon the whole school was involved, as the students voted between the giant water bug and the Isabella tiger moth. An in-school election was held the day after the February Primary Election that involved all 150-plus students from pre-school to high school, where the Isabella tiger moth won the vote.

The Isabella tiger moth is the adult stage woolly bear caterpillar, also called the woolly worm. It is found across the United States, Canada and Mexico, according to the National Weather Service. They tend to curl into a tight bristly ball and play dead when picked up or disturbed.

After the election, the process went to social studies teacher Nick Huston, who took the idea to his students to teach them about the process of getting a bill made and passed into law.

“We did this mostly with my 10th-grade government class,” Huston said. “We were able to show them the lawmaking process and was able to get our Senator Dan Lauwers to come speak with them about it, the potential roadblocks a bill like this could face and getting it into writing.”

Huston added, with help from Lauwers office and the English teacher Tanya Evans, the students had a hand in actually writing the bill. 

“If we can make it work we would want to try to take a trip down to Lansing if they were to call a hearing for the bill,” Huston said. “We just need to stay up to date through the process.”

“The faculty and students involved with this were great,” Lauwers said. “This was a great opportunity to give the students real-world and hands-on experience to learn the process. This has been the most engaged group of students I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to while in office.”

Lauwers said that the bill probably won’t see movement until after the August election, as members of both the House and Senate are currently out of Lansing. The summertime is when they are usually back in their districts meeting with constituents, in parades, and for the House members, campaigning for the primaries and November elections.

Principle and Superintendent Terri Falkenberg was proud of her students, as she saw them go through the process of getting this bill in front of the Michigan Senate.

“It was exciting to see the engagement of everyone working together as a team,” Falkenberg said. “We are a very small school and sometimes the students don’t always get recognized. It’s once to see the excitement going on around this bill.”

SB 937 was referred to the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture where it awaits a hearing.