A Natural Learning Environment

Outdoor Classroom Helps Reston Students Explore Life Sciences

Twelve-year-old Irving Tinajero declined an invitation to pick up a few of the countless insect larvae and other alien-looking specimens that squirmed in a plastic tub on the banks of Glade Stream in Reston.

"I'm scared," he said, stepping back, eyes wide. Then a classmate announced the discovery of a salamander in the tub, and Irving forgot his fear.

"Oh, cool!" he said, leaning forward. "Can I touch it?"

That was one of many moments of discovery last Thursday, when more than 200 seventh-graders from Langston Hughes Middle School explored Reston's outdoor classrooms -- its lakes, streams and forests -- as part of No Child Left Inside Day. The national environmental education initiative, sponsored by the American Geological Institute, was launched last year with a similar all-day field trip at Hughes.

"What we want to do is help them understand that what's happening within the four walls of the classroom actually relates to the real world and to careers in this field," Principal Aimee Monticchio said.

Carrying backpacks stuffed with bag lunches and clipboards for their field notes, students walked about a mile along paths from the school to Lake Audubon. There, they embarked on a multidisciplinary investigation of place.

Rotating among 10 stations set up along both sides of Twin Branches Road, they wrote haikus, made leaf rubbings and learned about mapping, stream flow, water chemistry, beavers and salamanders.

"Kids spend their days in malls, in movie theaters, playing video games," Monticchio said. "So now we're trying to say there are exciting things outside, too."

Hughes seventh-graders have taken field trips to the beaver pond near Lake Audubon for about 15 years. But the entire class has made the excursion only since 2007, Monticchio said.

As the effort to infuse the life sciences curriculum with outdoor education has grown, so has the work of volunteers. They numbered more than 80 this year and included parents, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey and students from nearby South Lakes High School.

Kevin Codera, a senior studying biology in South Lakes' International Baccalaureate program, walked the banks of Glade Creek, collecting aquatic invertebrates for the students' examination. He said he was thrilled to help.

"We barely get outside in school," said Kevin, 17.