A Day Outdoors Does Wonders

This year, KELT is piloting a new program for Bath Middle School (BMS) 8th grade students. Thanks to dedicated teachers, creative thinking, and new community partnerships, KELT led a gaggle of enthusiastic 13 year olds on a day long outing in Phippsburg.

BMS students used to have the opportunity to take a multi-day canoe trip outside, but budget constraints and limited schedules meant that the 8th graders had no outdoor education opportunities in 2024. When a teacher reached out to KELT to see if we could fill that gap, we immediately got to thinking: Where can we take these students outside to connect them more deeply to nature and themselves?

Students gather on Sewall Beach in Phippsburg - a part of the Bates Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

We ask ourselves that question because education in our local community is a central tent to our mission as a land trust. While land trusts may have been formed to protect land and wildlife habitat, we would not be able to conserve land for future generations without building meaningful relationships with people - particularly young people. In our education programs, KELT staff inspire kids to actively build relationships with the land and water they call home.

This past week, we answered that question when we brought BMS 8th grade out to Phippsburg for a day in the crisp fall sun. Students spent the morning at Shortridge Coastal Research Center, an 80-acre campus in Phippsburg, Maine located within a mile of the entrance to the Bate-Morse Mountain Conservation Area.

While the Center has a long history of being a site dedicated to academic and extracurricular activities for Bates College students and visiting researchers, this year the Center is expanding their focus to incorporate more place-based educational experiences for community schools, students, and educators. KELT is thrilled to collaborate and help lead students to explore the Center’s dynamic campus.

KELT staff encourages a student to observe pond creatures in Meetinghouse Pond

BMS Teacher and students find an inspiring spot to create a creative art piece overlooking Meetinghouse Pond and the surrounding marsh.

To kick off the day, students could opt into one of four activities: trail building, art at a beautiful viewpoint, scientific pond exploration, or shelter building in the forest.

When the students arrived to Shortridge Center, the energy was high and a few students immediately started turning over rocks to find red-backed salamanders and exploring the grounds. They loved the autonomy of choosing their first outdoor activity - after all, 8th grade is a time where you are exploring your agency, and defining who you want to be. 

After a fun and fast morning, we brought over each small group to Bates-Morse Mountain for a fall hike. Students got to be leaders of the group, making sure everyone was getting up and down the trail safely. They got to push themselves physically, completing the almost 4 mile hike in under 2 hours! They got that ever-valuable space to have long chats with their friends, out of the classroom walls and away from family. When we reached sparkling Seawall Beach, there was just pure childlike joy - running in the sand, clamoring up rocks, burying their legs in the sand. We forget sometimes that 13 year olds hold such a duality in them - seeking adulthood and independence, and at the same time brimming with childlike joy. 

At the beach, we took a moment to pause and put all the kids out on a beach solo. They spread out, away from the busyness of conversation, of assignments, of to-dos. With 10 precious minutes of silence in a beautiful place, it was a breath in the midst of a scheduled life. There was not a cell phone in sight. And then, of course, it was over - and they ran back to each other, chattering about school and teachers and growth spurts and sports and family life. 

BMS students take a solo-moment on Sewall Beach.

KELT is proud to offer these moments of connection to the outdoors for students of all ages. We're particularly happy to have such a longstanding relationship with the local middle school, where some amazing and dedicated teachers have cultivated projects with us for over a decade.

This 8th grade trip is just a new link in a long chain for local kids to have a touchpoint with KELT: in 7th grade, they begin the year with a day out on the clam flats of Reid State Park. On that day, we invite out Shellfish Warden Jon Hentz to teach them to dig for clams, we do a clam dissection out in the field, and then we test the water quality of their habitat to determine if it's healthy for soft shell clams.

Later in 7th grade, every student embarks on a research project about green crabs. We catch green crabs in traps at Fort Popham and Reid, examine them for physical characteristics that may tell us about how the population is changing, and then bring that data back to BMS to be analyzed. That project has yielded over 10 years of valuable data about how green crab populations are doing in the hometowns of these students, not to mention the skills of research, analytics, field work, data collection, graphing, and so much more. 

And for KELT, these three touchpoints of clamming, crabbing, and hiking means that we have individual relationships with kids at a really transitional time of life. We learn their names and their stories, and in turn we get to experience with them the value of getting outside and getting to know their local environment. There will always be kids who learn better by doing, who thrive out in the fresh air and with some mud in their shoes. How lucky to be able to provide that day outside to every single student at BMS!

BMS students cross the causeway overlooking Sprague River salt marsh in the Bates Morse Mountain Conservation Area.