Nathan Price’s Advanced Placement Environmental Science class (APES) took their lessons from the classroom to the great outdoors on Sept. 28.

Students visited the 50-acre Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center near Annapolis, MD where they trudged through marshes, examined plants, and sifted through mud in hopes of finding exciting wildlife to learn about. In this environment, students witnessed a diversity species and were briefed on issues such as habitat destruction and storm water run-off.

Experiencing the wetlands rather than reading about them, allowed the APES students to widen their breadth of knowledge on estuarine ecology and current environmental problems. Elizabeth Ervin `13 said, “Observing crabs, snakes, fish, and birds brought a lot of concepts we learned in class into a visual, tangible form.”

Students enjoy experiencing the real life applications of things they learn in the classroom.  Price plans to schedule additional field trips throughout the year, hoping to teach his students what a textbook cannot.