Science teacher takes Ocean City Intermediate School students by kayak to teach about ecosystem
OCEAN CITY – Ocean City Intermediate School science teacher Cory Picketts recently gave her students a nature experience in a wide-open classroom.
With a grant from the Ocean City Education Foundation, Picketts was able to teach her students about the importance of the back bay ecosystem as she had them all put on life jackets and board kayaks to paddle around the Great Egg Harbor Bay.
She said many of her students were shocked about the importance of the back back ecosystem.
“Most did not even head out into the bay before nor really think of its role in the overall health of our barrier island community and the ocean,” Picketts said. She believes that outdoor education is vital especially with all of the distractions courtesy of technology.
“So many people are so far removed from reality – Earth systems, our place in the universe, the interconnectedness of all things, and overall how things work, especially with regards to nature,” she said. “It is vital that we get back outside and reconnect.”
The educator provided part of her lesson outside the Bayside Center before they walked down Bay Avenue to Bay Cats, where the students paired up, put on life jackets and climb ed aboard their kayaks.
“Behind us is our back bay ecosystem. I am literally here every day in the summer doing nature tours and working with kids. The back bay ecosystem, you have to understand, is a nursery to the ocean,” Picketts told the students on the outing just before the end of the school year.
“Lots of organisms come here to have their young and they will stay here until they are bigger and stronger and ready to go where?” Picketts asked. “The ocean,” students answered.
Picketts explained the importance of the grassy islands that make up the back bay.
“Those islands form from cord grass. That generation of grass dies and then it becomes a spongy soil and new cord grass grows over top of that. It’s just generations and generations of cord grass that grow over top of each other,” she explained. “It’s very very spongy. It looks like a sponge and it absorbs water. We have high tides twice a day. If we didn’t have those we would be flooded,” Picketts said.
“The back bay also supports a bunch of organisms, especially bivalves. Bivalves are two-shell organisms,” she said. After asking students to name two-shell organisms, they shouted out, “Clams. Mussels. Oysters. Scallops.”
“We have all of those here,” Picketts said. “They are filter feeders so having those helps clean out all the junk we put in the water. Those bivalves are also a really important food source for birds.”
She explained Cape May County is important for migratory birds that use the coastline as a map. “They look down and see the coastline; it’s like roads to them. It tells them where to go. Cape May County and Cape May Point is the last stop for a lot of organisms before they go off to South and Central America.
“We get a lot of birds that pass through here,” she said, which brings birders to the county to watch them.
Out on the bay, students were able to see ospreys, great egrets, snowy egrets and American oystercatchers.
“The majority of the students were really excited and some apprehensive because they have never kayaked before,” Picketts said. “We grouped them so that there was one experienced kayaker per kayak and it was really cool to watch the students work together and grow their edges a bit through the experiences,” she added.
Picketts noted the experience, which took different groups of students out onto the bay over three days, was not just about education.
“Life is so much more complicated and chaotic now. Spending time in nature helps alleviate stress, anxiety and depression,” she said. “We need to make outdoor education a priority and we have the best venue for that in Ocean City with the bay and ocean literally as our front and back yards.” She hopes that students will become ambassadors for the city.
“We can say we care about the ocean and the bay, but when you don’t actually connect with them on a regular basis, you can’t understand the depth of importance they have on our survival and our community,” Picketts said.
By CAMRYN SCHULTHEIS /For the Sentinel