Midway Elementary School, Baldwin County Identifying Natural and Manmade Resources In this model EIC unit students will explore needs and wants and how they relate to natural and manmade resources. Students will then participate in a service learning project to see the benefits of preserving natural resources in their community. Earlier this year, Wanda Barrs, the Chair of the State Board of Education, visited with the EIC Team at Midway Elementary School in Milledgeville to hear how EIC was impacting student achievement. The team shared their accomplishments with Ms. Barrs, and their plans for grade-level gardens based on the state education standards. Midway Elementary School is located in beautiful historic Milledgeville, the site of the second state capital of Georgia. Baldwin County's history for being rural farmland has seen moderate development in the past 10 years, such as state run facilities, the construction of new school facilities, and small industries. Our school campus is uniquely situated between state highway 441 and the Bartram State Educational Forest, at the southern end of Baldwin County. The highway has recently been widened from a two lane to a five-lane highway. This busy thoroughfare runs from north Georgia, all the way through Dublin to 1-16 just north of Statesboro. With our partners from The Georgia Forestry Commission, our team learned of the state's proposed construction of 'The Fall Line Freeway' which would be routed through a portion of Bartram Forest. This 2000+ acre forest is utilized by numerous community sources for both recreation and educational purposes. This became an immediate concern as the focus of our investigation became "How will the proposed Fall Line Freeway affect our Community?" Our EIC team consists of a regular education first and fourth grade teacher, the school counselor, a K-3 emotional behavioral disorder teacher, as well as our school principal. Midway's goal is to instill an awareness and appreciation of the vital role that our forests play in our everyday lives. Students will have the opportunity to be actively engaged in various hands on field studies. These studies will help students acquire the understanding of how natural resources will be affected by the Fall Line Freeway and how the community's historical heritage will be affected. Midway is partnered with Georgia Forestry, Georgia College & State University, and Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center. Our teachers have become stakeholders in the EIC project through staff development activities, such as Georgia Conservancy's "Native Seasons" curriculum, Project WILD as well as Project WET's River of Words. We have established grade level courtyards that address the QCC's at each of the grade levels. In order to broaden and enhance our knowledge of how natural systems operate on our campus, we have added four new members to the team which consists of regular ed kindergarten, second grade, and gifted teachers through the Garden Earth collaborative, which is sponsored by University of Georgia's State Botanical Gardens. Our future goals are to develop a five-year site plan as well as investigate how the proposed freeway will affect the economy, wildlife, educational, and recreational opportunities. Through community-based investigations we will determine who are the stakeholders in the construction of the proposed Fall Line Freeway.