A Walk In The Pond

Gordie MacKenzie has been taking his classes mucking in the marsh for many years. Before him, in the 1980s, Bruce Rinker muddied the waters. In what has become a treasured school tradition, biology students don old clothes and forsaken sneakers and go for a walk in the muck.
 
There is no better way to relate to the environment and to solidify the connection to the land that is a hallmark of Millbrook’s environmental stewardship than to comb through a netful of native plants, creatures, and mud. Due to very dry conditions in the Hudson Valley, the usual route that students take through the marsh west of School Road was too shallow to be much fun. Mr. MacKenzie instead took his fifth form biology students to explore a manmade pond known colloquially as the “Second Hockey Rink.”
 
Armed with buckets and nets, the class took to the waist-high water in search of specimens to view under the microscope. Students gathered plants, dragonfly and damselfly nymphs, leeches, snails, crayfish, and three small fish for their upcoming unit called “What Is Life?” The samples will be kept alive in an aquarium habitat in the hallway at MASC as the class studies the food chain and learns to draw and classify their finds.
 
In carrying on Millbrook’s mucking tradition, some students have their first and most immersive experience of the natural world. They learn that there is life all around and they begin to see, feel, and understand the idea of habitat. Guided exploration of the muck gives context and richness to life here on our 800 acres.
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