Student field trip takes learning outdoors

Each year, the seventh grade students at Penns Valley Area School District have the unique opportunity, and for some, “the trip of a lifetime,” to take a field trip to Elk Creek outdoor learning at Fox Gap Rod & Gun Club in Centre County and then the Chesapeake Bay and CBF’s Phillip Merrill Environmental Education Center in Annapolis, MD.

The field day is a collaborative effort of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) in Pennsylvania, along with federal, state and local agencies and businesses and community members offering financial and technical support. Students experience water conservation on a personal level from the smallest creeks to the mighty Atlantic Ocean. Based on the concept, if there is good water for trout in Elk Creek in Centre County, Pennsylvania, eventually when this water gets to the Chesapeake Bay, it will be better water. Students are given the chance to do things such as fly fishing, electro-fishing, identify trout and other fish, collect samples of aquatic bugs and other critters that live in the creek and learned about water chemistry and watersheds. They plant trees as part of stream buffers and learn about their part in the conservation of our watersheds.

At the Chesapeake Bay students take a boat ride in the Bay and dredge for oysters, calculate the health of the oyster beds and hold a blue crab in their hands. All of these experiences allowed the students to move outside of the four walls of the classroom and into the world that will be their responsibility to protect.