A year-end project had fourth-graders from Wylie Elementary School playing the real life parts of sailors and scientists as they learned about the Great Lakes.
Wylie Elementary teacher Narda Black’s class ventured from Dexter to Traverse City on May 29, to participate in a Schoolship program with Inland Seas Education Association (ISEA). As students embarked on the schooner “Inland Seas,” Black said they became sailors and scientists and learned about the health of the Great Lakes.
This is the first time Black has brought her students to this place-based educational program in northern Michigan.
The students got to do things such as raising the anchor, hauling up the sails and steering the ship. They also collected and analyzed lake samples, including fish, plankton, and organisms that live along the bottom (benthos).
The trip was described as a unique hands-on experience that can only help increase awareness of the Great Lakes and encourage stewards to care for them.
“This has been a dream come true to be able to offer this wonderful opportunity to my students,” said Black, who is retiring at the end of the school year.
As the year closed out on her final year in the classroom, Black said she knows it is an experience that both she and her students will remember for years to come. It was also a bit of a full circle experience because one of the ISEA Interns on the excursion was Joe Ramey, a graduate of Dexter High School.
The ISEA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Suttons Bay. It’s dedicated to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education on the Great Lakes. Its shipboard and shore-side education programs are designed to inspire people of all ages to provide for the long-term stewardship of the Great Lakes. Programs are to schools, groups and the public.
Photo 1: Dexter fourth-graders experienced a unique hands-on experience this past month. Photo: DCS
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