1. Bringing the River to the Classroom and the Classroom to the River
By Chris Carrillo and Jack Wishart
At Christchurch School, the Science Department tries to “bring the river to the classroom” and “bring
the classroom to the river.” We are always striving to incorporate waterfront activities and
experiments into our curriculum while we prepare our students for college level courses when they
graduate. We continue to utilize the 1.5 hour lab periods to conduct hands-on experiments that
effectively help students realize that what they learn in a book translates to real world applications. We
have bright, enthusiastic and caring teachers that encourage students to reach beyond their goals.
Finally, we will be expanding into a new science building that will be a centerpiece where we can
integrate all science disciplines. In the meantime, we continue to develop our curriculum with student
involvement as its focus.
In conceptual physics, students developed their own hot air balloons and experienced the difficulties
designing, building and testing something that would fly. They also practiced building and
programming their own Lego™ robots to carry out predefined missions. Students in health class
learned about the dangers of illegal drugs from our local sheriff and experienced the debilitating
effects of being under the influence by wearing “fatal vision goggles.” These goggles distort a
person’s vision to the point that it is difficult to walk a strait line. In marine science class, students
spent hours wading through water, surveying the beach, looking for microscopic organisms in seined
water samples, sampling the sand and water, and seeing how all these aspects connect to the
chemistry, physics and biology that many have already studied. In chemistry, students learned about
gas solubility by conducting the Mentos soda explosion….don’t try this one inside the house!!
The Science Department is looking forward to a bright and thriving future. We are eagerly waiting for
the ground breaking of a new science building. This building will form the infrastructure of our
department and each classroom will be designed with each science discipline in mind. With this
building we will also “bring the river to the classroom” and to all our Christchurch students and
alumni. Instruments at the waterfront dock will record water temperature, salinity, water clarity, tidal
height, wind speed and air temperature, and transfer these results to the classroom where they will be
displayed on large monitors in real time. We will also incorporate web cams that can monitor wave
conditions on the river and record ongoing experiments in our new aquaculture tanks.
In the spirit of bringing the classroom to the river, we have begun building a program that will support
classroom and after school activities. We have just received 150 and 1700 gallon fiberglass
aquaculture tanks that should be up and running within the year. These tanks will be used to grow
oysters, culture fish, study water chemistry and allow our students to explore the river by manipulating
water conditions within the tanks. We established an oyster reef below the existing Christchurch dock
and have seeded it with a native population of Chesapeake Bay Oysters. With our shift toward
studying molecular genomics in Biology, students will transform a jellyfish gene, which encodes
green fluorescent protein, into bacteria to make bacteria glow.
The Christchurch School Science Department is on a positive trajectory and will continue to instill
students with a basic science education and at the same time give them special, unique experiences
that they will remember for a lifetime.