Worcester Prep students experience outdoor education

Worcester Preparatory School eighth-graders bonded with nature and each other on a three-day, rustic adventure Oct. 8-10 at Echo Hill Outdoor School. Located on the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, the school has served as a platform for educating children about nature and the environment for more than 100 years.

While team building with their peers, students experienced hands-on education outside the classroom. The students and their chaperones, Head of Middle School Megan Wallace, school nurse Anne Regan and music teacher Christopher Buzby, lived in tents while hiking through woods, climbing trees, building fires, learning hunting skills, and studying marine life and maps.

Echo Hill’s 300 acres of forests, meadows, freshwater shrub swamp and mile-long beach on the Chesapeake Bay make the perfect playground for a variety of environmental studies. The daily activities, which included an adventure course and a 40-foot lab boat to investigate the bay’s ecosystem, were aimed at building and enhancing teamwork, confidence and self-esteem.