AP Environmental Science Labs Held at Strawberry Creek
Being outdoors is often an overlooked part of high school life. Students spend six or seven periods a day sitting in a classroom, with only a 40-minute lunch period to spend outside, most of which is spent in a store, or rushing to get back to school for fourth period.
This is why the students enrolled in AP Environmental Science are so lucky — they get to have their lab periods outside.
Once a week, the students meet at the corner between Oxford and Center streets. They walk together to Strawberry Creek, where they study the environment in a hands–on way that is not taught in textbooks. They look at the wildlife, the plants, and the creek levels.
“One week, we met up with some members of the Cal faculty, who taught us how to replant native species so they could be reintroduced into the area around the creek,” said Berkeley High School junior Kate Carlin.
“My lab activities are all outdoors, using the environment as a framework for instruction,” said AP Environmental teacher Mardi Mertens, creator of the outdoor lab program. “For me, it’s a joy to be outside with students. I love teaching, and I love connecting with students one on one.”
This type of learning is practical in the world, and much more fun than classroom lectures.
However, one anonymous BHS student claims, “One morning, our lab met at 7:20 to draw a tree at campus. My AP Environmental labs have not seemed necessary enough to be worthy of a lab period. I think that the labs could be more efficiently incorporated into our class period. However, this week we have been working on an owl pellet dissection lab, which has been really interesting and most definitely beneficial in understanding the food web and relationships between species.”
The AP Environmental Science curriculum requires a certain amount of field time, which is fulfilled by the creek labs.
The labs at the creek are not the only way to get lab credits for the AP Environmental Science class, however. “There are once-a-week after school labs in Strawberry Creek, and for students that prefer it, there are weekend hikes in Tilden,” said Carlin.
This gives students who don’t have the spare time an opportunity to participate in labs after school, and allows them to get even more in-depth with the class in an environmentally diverse area of Berkeley, like Tilden. Students are able to explore the natural spaces in their communities, as well as learn about the environment through hands-on activities. And it even has an exercise element in it too! As seen so often on campus, the wildlife in Berkeley is mostly appreciated by tourists who seem to find squirrels so exciting. These labs seem to be a way for students who live here to enjoy nature while receiving class credit at the same time.
Studying the water levels in the creek can lead to more knowledge about global warming, and the information taught in the class can be used a lot around Berkeley. Perhaps the labs are not always necessary, but this class period seems like a breath of fresh air during the day, and a much more creative way to learn than just reading something in a textbook or hearing it during a lecture. It seems to be more fun for the teacher and the student, even if they are just drawing a tree. Every moment outside is better for students’ health, and not to mention sanity. “It’s so much more enjoyable to be out in the nice weather for lab,” remarked Carlin, “instead of being stuck in a classroom after school taking notes.”
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