The AP Environmental Science class is working on an outdoor learning lab with hopes to make a difference in the environment. Starting up this school year, the outdoor learning lab gives students the opportunity to have a more hands-on experience while learning about the environment.
The lab focuses on taking an unused space at Hayes and turning it into a learning opportunity for students as well as a small-scale way to help the environment. The students hope to expand the program to more schools so the environment can be preserved and monitored.
“We’re just going to try to show how you can make a small patch of plain grass into something useful for the environment,” junior Alexis Graham said.
Joining this year has fueled her passion for the environment. Graham is planning to go into an environmental field once she enters college.
In the lab, students learn about the environment and how to help preserve it by testing soil and knowing what types of plants are native to Ohio. Specifically in the lab, students are planting medicinal plants, wildflowers and trees.
The project was started by Jeff Bakunas, who is one of the Environmental Science teachers, an aide of Teen Eco Summit, and adviser of Hayes’ Garden Club. His goal is to help the community learn how to reclaim their space and instill something more than just grass.
The team is split into several groups of students, including designing, hands on planting and integration. The designing group designed the plan for the field, the planting group tested the soil and plans out what plants to put in the lab. The integration group is recruiting people to expand their participation in the lab.
Although it was originally started by the AP Environmental Science class, it later branched out and incorporated the Garden Club. The lab is open to the whole community of Delaware. Bakunas is hoping the project will reach more people within the school and eventually all throughout the state.
“Hopefully [the lab] is going to be an awesome educational space for many of the different classes that are at Hayes and the community,” Bakunas said.
Students can go in after school to help out with the lab, but there are events throughout the year where students can go in for three to four hours to help out on the weekend. The AP Environmental Science class also works outside for at least 45 minutes every week.
So far, students have made some progress in the lab. They have tested the soil, outlined the sections of the garden, found all the various plants and started a social media.
In the lab there will be different mini-ecosystems that will act as representatives for places around Ohio. Including a prairie, some sand dunes and a mini forest, among other native areas to Ohio.
To go along with the different ecosystems, groups of students will specialize in each of them and learn all they can about it.
Terry Hermsen, one of the aides with the project, volunteers at a program called the Pollinator Pathway. He helps connect the lab to the community while Bakunas connects it back to the school.
The latest big event for the outdoor learning lab was the Honeysuckle Hackfest which took place on Nov. 16. There, participants got rid of honeysuckle, an invasive species, to open up land for more native plants. Participants were able to enjoy food trucks and purchase native plants during the event.
“I’m excited for what [the lab] can hold,” junior participant Izzy Burgeson said. “I don’t think we’ve quite realized what it could be, because we still have a lot of work to do. But a lot of us are excited.”
