Henley Middle School's seventh-graders recently took an immersive science field trip to Lakeside Farms near Cove Point.

The students explored the wetlands — engaging with the environment by:

  • Touching a peregrine falcon
  • Examining a sucker nursery pond
  • Identifying various bird species using binoculars

Why This Trip Matters

The trip, organized by Principal Kristine Creed and the school's science teachers, demonstrated how farming and wetlands can co-exist to:

  • Improve water quality
  • Support endangered species (including the Klamath Basin's threatened suckerfish)
  • Enhance wildlife habitats

Students learned firsthand the practical applications of their life-science curriculum — the kind of moment that turns a textbook diagram into a living, working ecosystem they can stand inside.

Indigenous Knowledge in the Curriculum

Henry Rondeau from the Klamath Tribes enriched the experience by sharing traditional music and knowledge — helping build bonds between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities while grounding the wetland exploration in the cultural and ecological history of the Klamath people.

That kind of integration — Indigenous voices alongside Western science, both speaking to the same landscape — is exactly the kind of education the basin's young people need. The wetlands they walked through aren't just biology. They're millennia of Klamath cultural history.

Volunteer Experts and Real Science

The trip pulled in volunteer experts — biologists, conservationists, farmers — who walked alongside the students and answered their questions in real time.

Students learned about:

  • The Klamath Basin's role on the Pacific Flyway — one of the most important migratory bird corridors in North America
  • Suckerfish recovery — and why the Klamath Tribes' sucker-fish populations matter ecologically and culturally
  • Water quality — what makes wetlands act as natural filters
  • Habitat restoration — how farming practices can be adapted to protect wildlife without sacrificing agricultural productivity
  • The basin's working agricultural landscape — how Lakeside Farms operates as both a productive farm and a habitat partner

Why Field Trips Like This Matter

The standard middle-school life-sciences curriculum is taught in classrooms — for good reasons of scheduling, cost, and logistics. But a textbook can only do so much.

Standing in a wetland, binoculars in hand, hearing a peregrine falcon's call, getting a Klamath Tribes elder's perspective on the land you're standing on — that's the kind of education that sticks. Five years later, those seventh-graders won't remember the chapter quiz on ecosystems. They'll remember Cove Point.

Education research backs this up: immersive, place-based learning produces stronger retention and deeper engagement than equivalent classroom instruction. The kids who came home from Lakeside Farms came home with a different relationship to the basin's ecosystems than they had before.

Thanks to the Team

To Principal Kristine Creed, the Henley science teachers, Lakeside Farms, Henry Rondeau and the Klamath Tribes, and every volunteer expert who showed up to make this field trip happen — thank you.

Education like this is the kind of investment the basin's future is built on.