Indian River School District is building nature habitats in partnership with Delaware's Center for the Inland Bays
By Michael Short
SUSSEX - Some of the newest classrooms in Sussex County come without walls and windows.
Delaware's Center for the Inland Bays is working in partnership with the Indian River School District to build small schoolyard habitats at district schools.
Habitats include small wetlands, bluebird trails, birdhouses, butterfly gardens or rain gardens. It's an effort to bring a bit of nature to students and it's paying big dividends. Officials say it's a way to connect students with an outdoor world, a world that some fear they may be losing touch with.
Long Neck Elementary School Principal Charlynne Hopkins can rattle off lessons from kindergarten to fifth grade that students can learn from the school's small wetland. All, she said, are part of state standard education requirements. "We love it," she said.
And when the students aren't learning from the habitat, it provides a quiet, restful place complete with benches where adult mentors can take time to work with students.
The Center for the Inland Bays (CIB) is charged with protecting the three shallow bays that line Delaware's ocean coastline. That has been a long struggle that Delaware politicians and environmentalists have wrestled with since Pete DuPont was Delaware's governor.
Schoolyard habitats are considered a small step in those efforts to educate the public and protect the inland bays. Sally Boswell, the outreach and education coordinator for the CIB, said the program begin in 2006.
The Center was working with Indian River District students one day a year at the James Farm, a small jewel of protected land nestled along Indian River Bay near Bethany Beach. Middle school students spent one day a year at the site in a program that educators dubbed "hands on, waders on."
"We were reaching seventh and eighth graders one day a year. We were looking for a way to reach more students more than one day," she said.
Armed with a grant that meant the program could begin at no cost, Boswell approached the Indian River School Board, who approved the program. The grant from NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, allowed schoolyard habitats to be built at Long Neck Elementary School and Phillip Showell Elementary School.
There was also a habitat at Lord Baltimore Elementary School that had fallen out of use when the school closed temporarily for renovations. That existing outdoor education center was revived and updated as part of the program.
Now, schoolyard habitat sites include: Long Neck, Lord Baltimore, Phillip Showell, East Millsboro Elementary and Indian River High School.
Boswell said the sites can be used to teach math, creative writing, art and other subjects. "They are fertile places for all kinds of lessons," she said.
"Schoolyard Habitats are living classrooms for hands on learning. . . transforming school yards into outdoor learning discovery zones," according to the CIB website. "We are beginning with a wetland, but a school yard habitat is a growing thing . . . each year, something new can be added; a butterfly garden, a bluebird trail, a wildflower meadow, a raingarden . . . anything that creates a habitat for native plants and animals . . .that provides food, cover, nesting places or water for native wildlife. If you build it . . . they will come."
Boswell has since worked to find another funding grant for the program and Dr. Dennis Bartow has become Schoolyard Habitat Coordinator for the program. The Eagle Scouts have helped develop habitat and local gardening clubs have pitched in, part of a widespread community effort.
There are plans to build three new sites this spring at Georgetown Elementary School, Georgetown Middle School and Millsboro Middle School.
"Creating the habitat isn't the hard part," she said. "Creating the relationships and working with the school is the hard part."
She thinks it's part of a national green movement exemplified by schools growing their own vegetable gardens or using clean energy. "I think the timing is right," she said. "It's a huge movement and we are just seeing the beginning of it now."
She estimates that she gets 25 emails a day from around the country about similar programs. "It's a way for us to reach children where they are," she said.
There's a "No child left inside" program which has been spawned by a book entitled "No Child In the Woods", she said. That book details how children are no longer spending hours outside as they did when many of us grew up, meaning they may be losing touch with nature.
It's a frightening vision for Boswell, who remembers staying outside until she got hungry or darkness fell. "Where will the future caretakers and stewards come from if they haven't had these experiences? . . .People only take care of the things they care about. And people only care about the things they know."
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