In 1971, the first group of students visited the William S. Schmidt Outdoor Education Center in Brandywine, sleeping in pup tents and washing their hands with water trucked to the site from a nearby school.
Forty years later — and with 15 buildings now on site — Prince George’s County high school students planted a tree as part of a celebration commemorating the center’s decades of teaching children about water pollution, reusable fuels, compasses and animal habitats outside of a classroom setting.
“More students now don’t get an opportunity to experience the outdoors,” said Sylvester Conyers, the center’s supervisor. “I think it’s critical we equip these students with these experiences so they feel comfortable in the environment and they can make decisions in their communities.”
A handful of people, including County Council Chairwoman Ingrid Turner (D-Dist. 4), braved Saturday’s wintery weather for the brief program and lunch marking the anniversary of a center that has had to fight for survival through the school system’s integration in the early 1970s to the tough budget climate of the last few years, said John J. Neville, who served as supervisor from 1975 until he retired earlier this year.
“It means that the value of this program has overruled all efforts to diminish that value, that the struggle has not been in vain,” Neville said. “The citizens of Prince George’s County have said loud and clear that this legacy program is valued.”
Last-minute funding from the County Council saved the Schmidt Center in June, when the school board was poised to eliminate the program.
“The fact that it was the 40th anniversary and this wasn’t even going to happen because of budget cuts just makes it that much more special,” said Talha Siddique, a Schmidt Center intern and a senior at Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro.
Jacob Stettes, a science teacher at North Forestville Elementary School, said the experiences his students have at the Schmidt Center offer them a perspective many who grew up in a city don’t have.
“We can learn everything about technology, but if we don’t know how to apply it to our environment … we’re not going to be able to deal with our challenges, like global warming,” said Stettes, who has been bringing students to the center for three years. “Environment and technology are really going to have to merge.”
Neville, for whom the Schmidt Center’s administration building was renamed earlier this month, said it has been in danger of closing several times because some see outdoor education as optional.
“There’s no strand that moves through the curriculum that says, ‘This is the environmental education strand,’” Neville said. “What gets tested gets taught.”
So Neville and the center’s staff spent the past two decades working with teachers to integrate environmental education into social studies, math, science and language arts curricula — from discussing environmental legislation to reading books on wildlife.
“When [students] get older, they’ll be able to take care of the environment,” said Sierra Sanderson, an intern at the Schmidt Center and a junior at Wise High School. “They’ll be more knowledgeable about what hurts our climate and what helps it.”
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