Somewhere that’s green

From Sept. 24-27, sixth graders at Island Park Lincoln Orens Middle School traded their desks for the great outdoors as they traveled with their chaperones to the Greenkill Environmental Education Center in upstate New York. Greenkill, nestled in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains, is a 1,000 acre outdoor learning center complete with forests, fields, ponds, streams and three lakes. While it may seem like a three-day break from school, the annual outing is designed to provide students with hands-on experiences as they explore and enhance their knowledge of the environment, particularly plant and animal life. The learning experiences they receive at Greenkill are reinforced when they return to their classrooms through a variety of interdisciplinary activities. Here, the sixth graders get ready to ship off.