Classroom on the Sand with Global Field Academy

Overview

On April 15th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society led a Classroom on the Sand experience with 18 students and 8 educators from Global Field Academy. We met our team of students at Angelfish Pavilion of Oleta River State Park in North Miami and after getting settled as well as an introductory briefing on the park, we began our day with a cleanup of the surrounding park and shoreline. Our students were extra motivated, hoping to beat our previous record of trash collected from our last visit to Oleta River State Park. The area around our pavilion for the day was inundated with straw wrappers, the remnants of coal and charcoal from grills, and various other types of plastic and glass pollution. After just one hour, our team of students managed to surpass our previous record by removing more than 97 pounds of trash from the park grounds. Following the cleanup, we led our team of students in a wrap-up discussion before leading into our second activity. Students had a chance to model real-life watershed dynamics and gain a deeper understanding of the types of pollution utilizing our Enviroscapes Dynamic Model Watershed Table. The students asked excellent questions and proved to be experts on the various types of pollution that plague South Florida! We ended our day with one last round of Q&A about all things ocean, during which the students made excellent conclusions and asked even more great questions. We give a huge thanks to the students and educators of Global Field Academy for their hard work and to the team at Oleta River State Park for hosting us, and we hope to work together again very soon.