Hello neighbors!
Kids are out of school, which means our campus is a city park full-time until the fall semester begins. Come play on our play structure, start a pickup game of soccer with our new soccer goals, or sit at our picnic tables. Feel free to admire our garden and have a taste of anything ripe you see growing.
SES has no events planned until August so I thought I’d share a little information about one of the things that makes our school stand out from the others: our middle school marine biology program.
The middle school experience for SES’s sixth, seventh, and eighth graders is unlike that of any other public school student’s in the district. We use a thematic curriculum for all grades; in middle school the themes are mountain, forest, river, and ocean. In the fall and spring, all middle schoolers spend their Thursdays on field trips in the community to places that correspond with the theme they are studying. This culminates in each grade taking a week-long, overnight marine biology excursion in May, a true capstone experience for each middle school year.
Each middle school class goes to a different location. In sixth grade, students spend three days in Newport, Oregon. They stay in yurts at South Beach State Park, dissect squid, take a crabbing boat into Yaquina Bay, and visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
Seventh graders spend a week at Olympic National Park in Washington. They attend NatureBridge camp and spend a week immersed in river ecology, hiking, and canoeing on Lake Crescent.
Eighth graders spend a week at the Catalina Environmental Leadership Program on Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of California, southwest of Los Angeles. Here they kayak and snorkel in the ocean, hike, and complete community service projects.
In addition to being amazing educational experiences, these middle school trips help our students bond, learn about themselves and one another, and see kids they’ve been in class with for years in a new light. These trips contribute to making SES the wonderful community it is, and provide the support middle schoolers need as they slowly transition from elementary to high school.
Finally, all of our middle school students go on these marine biology trips regardless of their ability to pay. While parents are asked to make a financial contribution, the school community raises money for those who are unable to do so through the PTSA Go Fund. Many of the fundraisers you have seen advertised in this column support the PTSA Go Fund, so for anyone who has contributed, thank you for helping make these amazing trips accessible to all our students, regardless of their family’s financial situation.
Have questions about SES? Email [email protected] and maybe I’ll answer them in a future column!