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Hale Reservation and Xaverian
A New Partnership By Matthew Malley ’20
I
t’s a sunny autumn morning and 27 Xaverian juniors step off the bus at Hale Reservation. They just took a short eight-minute ride from Clapboardtree Street and they’re about to embark on hands-on scientific research. This isn’t a once a year field trip...it’s part of the curriculum. Xaverian is proud to announce a partnership with Hale Reservation, providing students with 1,137 acres of land and water for real-life scientific applications. This partnership is the fruition of a year of planning and curriculum building. “Last year, the biology teachers were looking for ways to make the unit on ecology in the junior curriculum more ‘hands on,’ in order to replicate how real science is conducted,” said Dr. Bryan Dunn, science department chairperson. There were projects of this type attempted in the past but, he said, “There was always something missing.” This time, everything seemed to fall into place as Dr. Jacob Conca ’94, Xaverian Principal, was already assisting Hale Reservation on some academic programing that they wanted to provide. As the team at Hale explained their ideas, Dr. Conca realized that Xaverian could utilize the reservation for academics too, and a partnership was born. The science department began structuring new curriculum, and Dr. Dunn engaged in a series of meetings with Hale to work out logistics. “Science is not a subject that is limited to the classroom. It surrounds us and helps to explain the observations we have every day,” said Mr. TJ Manning ’09, a biology teacher at Xaverian. With that in mind, students now travel to Hale with their science teachers three times over the course of the fall semester. They form small groups and are free to collaboratively research any topic of their choosing, provided it applies to the natural landscape. Some areas of investigation include soil and water testing, and the effect of variables on leaf color changing. “Real science is often messy, results can
“
”
_This new partnership will hopefully show that
there is not always an answer you are ‘supposed’
to get, but that some of the best learning happens in these ‘messy’ circumstances. Mr. TJ Manning ’09, biology teacher
be inconclusive, and failure is normal,” said Mr. Manning. He continued, “Learning how to set up an experimental study, gather the data, and process the results, is invaluable. This new partnership will hopefully show that there is not always an answer you are ‘supposed’ to get, but that some of the best learning happens in these ‘messy’ circumstances.” The feedback Mr. Manning has received from students confirms that they appreciate this new learning environment. “Students tell me that they enjoy being able to get hands on with the learning and do authentic science that requires some creativity, as opposed to doing labs that are scripted by the teacher,” said Mr. Manning.
“This partnership demonstrates innovation,” said Mr. Stephen Dacey ’95, Assistant Principal for Teaching and Learning. “It’s innovation both on the part of the teachers, who employed out-of-the-box thinking to initiate this project and applied their creativity to make it a reality, and the students, who constructed thoughtful hypotheses and designed inventive experiments to test their hypotheses.” Dr. Dunn said he is grateful to the staff at Hale Reservation, along with the administration at Xaverian, for supporting this initiative to bring real-world science into the hands of Xaverian students.
Winter 2019
Xaverian Magazine
17