Va. Beach students get hands-on experience in new environmental studies program
Without access to the scientific equipment they’d have in the classroom, the inaugural class of Virginia Beach’s high school environmental studies program — meant to be hands-on and immersive — has had to get creative at home.
So when Jordyn Lewis, a junior in the program, was collecting data for nitrogen cycles and recording observations in her backyard, she had to bring along her family’s meat thermometer to check the temperature of the air and the soil.
“Just make sure you clean it off before you give it back to mom,” said her teacher, Chris Freeman, who leads the program.
School leaders are touting this new initiative, a partnership between Virginia Beach public schools and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, as a one-of-its-kind program, meant to bridge the gap between the classroom and the community. It’s supposed to be housed in the Brock Environmental Center — the bay foundation’s regional home and one of the world’s greenest buildings — though the coronavirus pandemic has postponed that.
The curriculum is focused on hands-on experiments and solving real environmental problems, meant to put students in the world around them every single day, Freeman said. Among the list of projects he and his 42 students are excited about this semester: oyster reef restorations, testing water and air quality, learning about trees’ histories through tree coring and studying zooplankton.
“This isn’t a school. This is not at a school setting,” Freeman said. “It’s sort of redefining what a classroom looks like.”
The first year of the program has four classes, focused on watersheds, natural resource management and sustainability. Half of the students attend the program in the morning, and the rest in the afternoon. And next year, the senior curriculum will include the possibility of an internship with community partners.
The idea came to school leaders back in 2016, said Tim Cole, sustainability officer for the schools. Superintendent Aaron Spence was at a leadership retreat at the Brock Center, and he brought up a program in Michigan, where a school district had a unique, immersive academy. There, a local zoo serves as the students’ classroom.
“And he said, looking around in this facility, that this would be a really cool building to do something around sustainability here,” Cole said.
‘We had an adventure’
Freeman leading the program seems like a perfect fit. He’s taught AP environmental studies before — and his interest in this work traces back to his own time in high school. There, his favorite teacher led the kind of work that’s at the heart of Virginia Beach’s new environmental studies program.
His teacher got approval to have a field trip to start at 4 a.m. every Wednesday. The students would get up, go hiking and explore the world around them, Freeman said. They would get back to school five hours later, worn down and tired — but excited, too.
“We would be gone from 4 and get back to school at 9 and be muddy and dirty and exhausted — but we had an adventure, right?” Freeman said. “He did that with his own personal time and sacrifice. It totally changed my perspective of the world. It changed who I am today.”
He called the chance to lead the program a dream come true.
While Freeman has said this
first semester has gone well, there have been some challenges with virtual learning. Lewis, who is 16 and attends Kellam High School, was among the high schoolers who returned for in-person classes for two days, before school leaders decided to return to remote learning due to rising coronavirus cases in the region.
Freeman leads his virtual classes from the Brock center, trying to show off the space and keep the students’ enthusiasm up. The wifi extends outside, so he sometimes teaches beyond an outdoor deck that connects to the main center. He’s even taught classes while riding a stationary bike in the front of the room, which charges cell phones and computers when one pedals.
“It’s thinking through how to get kids excited and laughing and thinking about this space as theirs and trying to keep their spirits high,” he said. “They are missing being in a really, really amazing space.”
He’s tried to get them to the center as much as possible too. Students can come and explore outside on Thursdays, and he’s seen more and more students come as the semester wears on. Masks and staying distant is the key, he said.
But the crown jewel of the program is the new classroom, which will be finished near the end of the year and, if health metrics allow, welcome students inside soon after.
‘Look out the window’
The 1,600-square-foot room will be connected to the rest of the center by a deck and it will feature a slew of details designed to make students think more about their surroundings.
There will be solar panels, energy-efficient windows, rainwater treatment and recycled gym flooring. Smart thermostats will monitor conditions, automatically turning off the HVAC system if it’s cool enough. Some passive solar will be used for energy, and wind turbines howl away just a few feet from the windows.
There also will be a 9-by-14-foot “green” wall covered with plants and vegetation, which will help filter the air and dampen noise, in addition to its aesthetic value, said Chris Gorri, the center’s manager.
The classroom will be named “The Macon F. and Joan P. Brock Classroom” after its benefactor, Joan Brock, who pledged the money to build it. Cole previously said the classroom will cost around $1.5 million.
Gorri said the original center was built to educate the community — and the next generation of leaders. This partnership with Virginia Beach schools, he said, is the perfect extension of that idea.
During a tour of the space, Cole and Freeman joked about the possibility of getting school officials to approve a zip line from the top floor to outside. The upstairs makes the building feel like a treehouse, with the windows nestled among the tops of the trees.
But it’s the downstairs view — featuring a clear shot of the Chesapeake Bay — that illustrates what the class is all about. One could argue that it will distract students from their lessons, but Freeman wants students gazing at the waterway.
“Usually you might be in a classroom and be like, ‘Stop looking out the window, kid, get back to work.’ ” Freeman said. “But here, it’s like, ‘Yeah, look out the window.’ Because it ties directly back into what we’re learning today.”
Freeman leads his virtual classes from the Brock center, trying to show off the space and keep the students’ enthusiasm up.