Classroom on the Sand with Christopher Columbus High School

Overview

On April 7th, 2025, The International SeaKeepers Society hosted a Classroom on the Sand with 14 students and 2 educators from Christopher Columbus High School at Historic Virginia Key Beach Park in Miami, Florida. After meeting up with our students, our Chief Programs Officer and Christopher Columbus alumni, Tony, gave a background talk on his career path and answered some questions from the students on how he found himself working with SeaKeepers. Afterwards, we made our way down to the beach and began our activities with a shoreline and park cleanup. The area around the park routinely hosts gatherings such as music festivals, leading to the shores and park itself being constantly inundated with high amounts of various trash. In just one hour, our team of students and chaperones managed to collect more than 80 pounds of trash from all over the park, leaving behind healthier and happier ecosystems for local animals as well as us to enjoy. Following our cleanup, our students had the chance to hear from Luiz of the Park’s Education Team about the history of Historic Virginia Key Beach Park. Finally, our students had the chance to model and observe pollution dynamics in practice through the use of our Enviroscapes Dynamic Watershed Table. Our students were experts on the types of pollution, easily knowing all of the major types and even a few of the much less commonly known aspects of pollution in South Florida. We give a huge thanks to the students and chaperones of Christopher Columbus High School for their hard work and participation, to Luiz and all of Historic Virginia Key Beach Park for hosting us, and we hope to see some of these students again soon at future SeaKeepers events!