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Classrooms without walls

Students from 24 school districts across the Island are studying out in the field, fighting for wildlife and saving open spaces

BY CHRISTINA HERNANDEZ | christina.hernandez@newsday.com

On a Friday last month so blustery that umbrellas provided little shelter from the chilling rains, several William Floyd High School students elected to spend the morning outdoors.

They sloshed through the mud of the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge in Shirley -- some wearing dark green waders, but most in jeans and sneakers -- on a mission to save the birds and snakes, turtles and deer threatened by illegal all-terrain-vehicle activity there.

On their last of five trips to the refuge since October, members of the Environmental Stewardship Club measured such variables as soil temperature and water conductivity. The data are pieces of a longitudinal study, which examines the same set of circumstances over time, on how ATVs have affected the 2,572-acre refuge.

The students discovered a drastic reduction in wildlife activity near ATV trails, as well as an increase in invasive plant species and soil erosion throughout the reserve, findings they later presented to local scientists.

"This is one of the largest reserves left on the Island and people are coming here and destroying it," said senior Daniel Bechhofer, 17, of Shirley.

The club, which has paved the way for an advanced placement class at the high school next year, is part of Brookhaven National Laboratory's Open Space Stewardship Program in which students from 24 Long Island school districts are partnered with their communities to be stewards of local land.

"Just getting them out into the environment is something that is missing today," said Melvyn Morris, educational programs administrator for the lab. "We wanted them to also feel a sense of pride for something that was in their community."

Out of the classroom

The program began in schools in the fall of 2006 as a way to get students out of the classroom and into their neighborhoods to solve real-world problems and develop environmental sensitivity, Morris said. With about $11,000 in grants from local officials, he said the lab can provide schools minimal funding.

"It's gotten students out to act as field investigators," Morris said. "We hope that over the long term that students will begin to see trends that are happening within their data."

A school's involvement in the program begins with a one-week summer course for teachers, he said. Teachers perform activities they'll later do with students, including using global positioning systems, taking soil samples and donning waders to do water testing.

While some teachers choose their own projects, Morris said, in most cases the lab will connect a teacher and a local land steward, such as a town environmental employee, to develop a student project. Last school year in the Patchogue-Medford district, one such collaboration yielded long-term results.

John Turner, director of the Division of Environmental Protection for the Town of Brookhaven, realized a 100-acre plot of municipal land in Medford contained a rare scrub oak savannah. He paired up with the school district through the Open Space Stewardship Program to protect the land from possibly becoming another highway storage yard or town hall annex.

Joseph Filippone, director of science for the district, chose three high school students to prepare a presentation to the Brookhaven Town Board on the biodiversity of the land, outlining its plant and animal life.

"It's just a shame to see everything on Long Island getting built up and turned into a strip mall or a shopping center," said one of the students, Patchogue-Medford High School senior Michele Shebroe, 17. "I just thought it was a good cause to save land for future generations of kids to be able to go out and explore."

After the presentation, the board voted unanimously to dedicate the land -- called Fish Thicket -- as a nature preserve. Councilman Timothy Mazzei, who represents part of Medford, said the decision to preserve Fish Thicket was a "win-win situation" that accomplished both the continued preservation of open space and the education of local students.

Student stewards are so important, Turner said, because there aren't enough staff members to study and manage all of Long Island's preserved land. He said one student project at Fish Thicket will be a longitudinal survey of breeding birds.

Students have also hosted cleanups there, Filippone said, and studied everything from the scrub oak savannah to the history of the road that gave the reserve its name. "Our motto is 'No child left inside,'" he said. "We want to get them outside and excited about being in nature."

Listening to children

Fourth-graders in the Mattituck-Cutchogue district recently sought to accomplish a similar feat through their version of the Open Space Stewardship Program. After weeks spent researching Pipes Cove, partially preserved wetlands in Greenport, Maryellen Gamberg's students created a persuasive presentation and initiated a letter-writing campaign in an effort to convince Southold's Town Board to continue preserving the area.