From tide pools, the ocean, and forest trails to canoeing, campfires, and time with friends, take a look inside an unforgettable week in Maine
What does a week at The Ecology School look like?
This week, photographs help tell the story of Carver students entering 7th through 10th grade as they explore the woods, waters, fields, and coastline of Maine.
The images capture days filled with activity and discovery: students hiking beneath the trees, exploring tide pools along the Maine coast, getting out on the water, investigating ecosystems, taking on new challenges, sharing meals, laughing with friends, and simply enjoying the rare opportunity to spend a summer week immersed in nature.
The photographs to explore are in the Google Photos collections linked here:
Learning Beyond the Classroom
The students are spending the week at The Ecology School’s River Bend Farm in Saco, Maine, a historic 105-acre farm situated along a scenic bend in the Saco River and just twenty minutes from the coast.
Here, the outdoors becomes the classroom.
The Ecology School’s educators lead students through hands-on experiences designed to awaken curiosity about the natural world. Forests, fields, rivers, and the rocky Maine coast offer opportunities to observe, investigate, ask questions, and understand the relationships connecting living things and their environments.
But look through the photographs and another kind of learning becomes visible, too.
You see students growing more comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. You see friendships strengthening. You see young people trying things they might never have imagined doing at home. And you see the independence and confidence that can develop when students leave their everyday routines behind and spend a week exploring someplace entirely different.
A Journey That Grows With Them
For many of these students, Maine is no longer unfamiliar.
Carver’s Ecology School experience is designed to build from year to year. Students who once boarded the bus as first-time sixth graders return older and more confident, ready for new experiences and deeper exploration.
That continuity is part of the magic of the program. A place that initially seemed far from home becomes somewhere students know—and somewhere filled with memories of who they were when they first arrived and how much they have grown since.
Carver CEO Novelette Peterkin and Carver Chief Program Officer Brian Allert joined the students at The Ecology School as they explore, learn, and enjoy their week together.
Carver remains deeply grateful to The Grossman Family Foundation, whose generous and sustained support makes this extraordinary multi-year experience possible for our students.
See Their Week in Pictures
A handful of photographs could never capture everything that happens during a week like this—which is why we're sharing much more here.
Follow the Google Photos links above to browse hundreds of photographs from our students' week at The Ecology School. A few more photos are added below in the gallery.
Look beyond the spectacular Maine scenery and you'll see what this experience is really about: curiosity, friendship, independence, confidence, discovery—and the sheer joy of being young and outdoors in Maine.
