11.1.13 Congaree National Park Trip

This has been sort of a whirlwind week for D9. I've been MIA a good bit this week doing presentations in the district on Design Thinking and Project Based Learning, so Coach West, Mrs. A, and Mrs. Soblo have held down the home front. Students have begun a new unit with Mrs. A that is going to be focusing on human rights and the struggles with those human  rights across the globe. To supplement that, students have begun their first unit of basic geography with Coach West.. Mrs. Soblo has been preparing students all week for the trip we took today to Congaree National Park.

We've had this field study on the books since early October, but with the government shutdown of national parks we've postponed it a few times. Finally today we were able to take both D9 and D10 to the swamp! Students were broken into groups and had to identify examples of the species they have been studying with their Educational Tool. Congaree has a beautiful boardwalk suspended in the air so all our students were able to attend the trip without worries of accessibility. Each teacher took three or four groups and we were off around 10 a.m. 

We walked,

saw wildlife, 

took selfies,

 ate some snacks,

took in the view at the lake and fed a turtle,

 loved on some HUGE trees,

The two boys in grey in the back are over 6 feet tall...if that's any clue as to how big this tree is!

 and walked more.

We walked around 3 miles in total and my group did it in an hour and a half. We were wiped. Students had a great day even with all the walking. Some of our students had never experienced a forest like this one, and some had never spent time outside like we did. They got to see a lot of the species from their field guides first hand, which was a great experience and also let them see, in a small way, what some of the possibilities could be from their own outdoor learning spaces.