While standing knee-deep in slimy mud, 14-year-old Bergundie Parker said she couldn’t help but crack a smile.
Parker, a rising sophomore at Christiana High School, was one of 25 Delaware Futures students who spent a week working on marsh restoration at the DuPont Environmental Education Center in Wilmington.
Digging invasive phragmites out of the muck and replacing them with native plants was dirty work, Parker said, but it was also a learning experience.
“Nature has more of an effect on our living style than I thought,” she said.
Helping Delaware Futures students understand the natural world around them, and how their futures and careers could be shaped by the environment, was the goal of the inaugural summer camp, said Lesley Bensinger, education coordinator at DNS.
Students enrolled in the Delaware Futures program are at-risk kids who are willing to go the extra mile to get into college through a rigorous academic and social program.
And for most of the summer camp students, who spent each night sleeping in the lodge at Hockessin's Ashland Nature Center, the outdoor activities were well outside their comfort zones, Bensinger said. In addition to replacing invasive plants, the students built a boardwalk and installed bird boxes and basking logs for turtles in the marsh. They also learned about the history of Wilmington and studied the economics and ethics that play into environmental decision making.
The ethical lessons were the most poignant for Ian Scott, 15, of Claymont, who said he learned a lot about how fragile nature is.
“The most interesting thing I’ve learned is how connected we are, humans and animals, and how the things we do affect other animals,” he said.
For Brandywine Hundred resident Jahi Ross, 14, it was the challenges that made the summer camp interesting. Not an outdoorsman by any means, Ross struggled to use a fishing net during one activity.
“I couldn’t catch anything but seaweed,” he said.
Still, he said he learned a valuable lesson that things don't always work out the way one hopes.
The students may not all become environmental scientists, but Denise Tolliver, executive director of Delaware Futures, is hopeful they gained an understanding of the career paths and college course options that are available.
Even beyond college, a lesson in environmental stewardship, learned in the midst of a muddy marsh, ought to stick, Bensinger said.
