Some people remember 6th grade as a horrendous year or maybe others connotate middle school with new teachers and friends from gym class. But for most people, the time to remember was Outdoor School.

For one week, 6th grade students spend the night at an outdoor camp with the guidance of adult staff and volunteer high school, student leaders. During this time, one of the key activities that they participate in is a field study, led by the student leaders. 

Each student leader chooses one of four field studies: Water, soil, plants, or animals. Meanwhile, the 6th graders spend the week rotating through each field study and completing outdoor activities to increase their knowledge of each topic. 

Hayden Trotter, Junior and prior student leader for Collins, mastered the field study of plants. Trotter knew little about the topic at first. “Being at outdoor school made me realize how connected our environment is, which led me to be more appreciative of our forests,” she states. 

Lucy Neron, Junior, taught soil and water field study at Collins and Namanu. “We would take kids down to the banks to teach them about the way water weathers down the landscape and water pollution. I would take my group to a pond where they caught rough-skinned newts,” she shared.

These experiences broadened students’ horizons beyond the world of science, also connecting student leaders to the wonders of child management. 

In order to engage students in learning, the leaders must come up with ways to directly interact with all of the 6th graders to make the activities fun while still being educational. 

Trotter would collaborate with students to mark off a BINGO sheet where spotting different plant species would earn the kids a special bead to put on their wood cookies. Alternatively, Neron would encourage the kids to be more hands-on and come up with hypotheses of their own.

Throughout the process of teaching the science material, student leaders could gain a new understanding of the world around them. By experiencing things through the eyes of a 6th grader, high schoolers were also able to notice how nature blooms in every corner of the Earth, whether it’s visible or not.