About River School

Overview: What it is

You board a bus for a field trip and you arrive in a parking lot. OK, it’s a strange parking lot with a pig sculpture suspended on a giant coiled spring but pretty soon, there’s an adult telling you what to do, what not to do, where you’ll go and what test you’ll take afterwards. OK, at least you’re not in school.

Oh, but you are. You’re in River School and learning starts now, including:

• how to work as a team
• how to tell a “left-handed” snail from a “right-handed” and why they’re called that
• why agricultural soil practices can kill fish
• how much a bald eagle weighs
• why your neighbor cares about what you do at your house
• how the jaws of a snapping turtle work
• what tiny creatures can tell us about water quality

From the moment you shove off from your launch site in the morning until you take out, all too soon that afternoon, you will learn about rivers and what they mean to our quality of life. You’ll learn that almost everything we do affects watersheds and has a lasting effect on us and our neighbors.

Materials at this web site are Copyright 2005–2008 Friends of the White River, Inc.