On Monday, seventh-grade students from Sussex Central Middle School walked through the wetlands at James Farm Ecological Preserve and waded in the Indian River Bay. While some caught wildlife with nets in the water, another particularly enthusiastic student picked up a crab and took a picture. Yet another explained the difference in striping on small male and female fish.
Coastal Point • Jonathan Starkey:
Don Minyon, left, and Jonathan Mercado take a look at some of the natural wonders found at the James Farm.
The wide-eyed students visiting Monday were just some of the Indian River School District seventh-graders to visit the preserve in recent weeks. In collaboration with the district, the Center for the Inland Bays sponsors an educational program at the mostly-undisturbed haven.
Seventh-graders, such as the ones there Monday, take turns visiting for the more-than-two-month program in the fall, which ends at the end of this month. Eighth-graders get their turn in the spring. The program gives students a hands-on learning approach that collaborates with their in-classroom science curriculum.
“You don’t actually get to see it,” in the classroom, 13-year-old Emmy Eskridge said Monday. “You actually get to see it, touch it and interact with it (here).”
Gloria Heisserman, one of the program’s five teachers, also talked up the hands-on approach to learning that the educational program offers.
“This is so hands-on that they just thrive,” she said. “It’s something that everybody — low achievers, high achievers — can get into. It makes sense.”
The teachers, three of whom are on duty daily, walk and instruct the seventh-grade students through two activities while at James Farm, just outside of Ocean View.
Students first learn to identify wetlands by testing the soils, observing vegetation in the area and offering a site description detailing the wetland’s hydrology, soil type and plant life.
The instructors also demonstrate the significance of the wetlands as habitats and pollutant removers, and discuss testing and observation findings with the students. Students are asked to test and observe one wetland and one non-wetland, and delineate between the two.
“They’re paying very close attention,” said first-year Sussex Central teacher Tara Gates, who accompanied her class to the all-day James Farm trip on Monday. Gates said that the material learned through the project directly correlates to the in-class studies. “I think it’s wonderful. The information they are getting is invaluable,” she added.
When the students finish the work in the wetlands, they continue down the trail through the woods, over a boardwalk that runs through a marsh and onto a beach on the Indian River Bay.
There students determine the bay’s health through spot testing and learn about the fish, organisms and plant species that live there. Through saline, dissolved oxygen, temperature and ph level tests, students begin to understand the health of the bays, although the tests are too site-specific to draw an overreaching conclusion, teachers noted Monday.
The seventh-graders, in what seemed to be their favorite part of the day, waded into the bay with seining and clamming nets to catch and study wildlife living there. Discussions and practical instruction about the observations and test follow the fact-gathering operation.
Coastal Point • Jonathan Starkey:
Emily Eskridge and David Cornish use a seining net at the James Farm Ecological Preserve.
“When they walk out of here, they should have a pretty good idea of what’s living in the bay, the health of the bay and how to improve it,” said Don Minyon, new Millville town councilman, one of the program’s teachers and a former Pennsylvania school teacher.
Sally Boswell, the CIB education and outreach coordinator who oversees the program, said that exposing students directly to the environment is an educational technique she believes in and is committed to.
“It’s a very graphical, physical way for children to see something that’s hard to grasp in the classroom. There’s no replacing that kind of visual hands-on activity,” Boswell said. “The most powerful thing we can do is get them in a hands-on, waders-on day at James Farm. They respond well.”
Heisserman, who taught in a similar program in Maryland, agreed, adding that exposing children to their surrounding environment early is a great resource for proponents of the inland watershed.
“They’re going to be the stewards,” she said. “They’re either going to take care of the bay or they’re not.”
At least by getting the students out of school, onto a beach and into the water, the program is offering a good impression that to some, is their first.
“Its fun and it helps our rivers and bays,” 13-year-old Jonathan Mercado said while holding a small fish Monday. “I want to come back.”