Parks bring free and low-cost nature education to underserved schools in Southeast Michigan

This story is part of Equity in Our Parks, a series highlighting the people and organizations advancing equity through Southeast Michigan’s parks and related programming. It is supported by Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Wayne County Parks and Recreation, Huron-Clinton Metroparks, City of Detroit, and Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. 

Nicole Samuel, assistant principal at Detroit's John R. King Academic and Performing Arts Academy, wanted more engaging science lessons for her students – and a local parks system stepped up to fulfill her need. Since 2022, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks' Supplemental Science program has provided weekly science education in John R. King Academy classrooms at no charge to the school.

Having organized many field trips to the Metroparks as a teacher, Samuel says she knew the Metroparks would "bring great value" to her school. She says the Supplemental Science program has lived up that expectation.

"It was so inspiring. ... They made science learning so fun," Samuel says. "That's what a lot of my students would say, that it was so fun now because [Metroparks staff] made it hands-on."
Huron-Clinton MetroparksA Supplemental Science lesson.
Samuel says free programming like Supplemental Science is particularly impactful for schools in underserved communities like John R. King Academy, whose student population is 92% economically disadvantaged according to statistics from the Center for Educational Performance and Information.

"I think it's important that our children are exposed to things that they would not normally be exposed to," Samuel says.

The Supplemental Science program is just one of many ways that Southeast Michigan's parks are working to connect students in underserved communities to nature and science programming. Jennifer Jaworski, chief of interpretive services at Huron-Clinton Metroparks, sums up the importance of offering such programming with a simple piece of feedback she received from one eighth-grade student. Responding to a question about how the student's perception of the outdoors had changed since participating in Metroparks programming, the student said, "I thought I was going to die outside, and now I know I'm not going to die."

"I personally have an eighth grader ... so it's very on par with the drama," Jaworski says. "But it's real, right? That is a real feeling, to overcome whatever fear you might have going into the outdoors."

That fear may feel particularly real for many children living in underserved communities. They often have fewer opportunities to explore the outdoors in their own neighborhoods, fewer parks in their communities, and fewer field trip opportunities due to school budget limitations. But given the chance to explore and learn from the natural world, new educational possibilities open up for those young people.
Huron-Clinton MetroparksA Metroparks school field trip.
"When kids get the opportunity to be hands-on with nature, or to be in nature and to see things firsthand, it can really spark curiosity and deepen the learning that they're getting with their certified teachers in their classrooms," says Mary Blumka, recreation program supervisor for nature education at Oakland County Parks.

Jaworski agrees.

"As a young person ... you're at this pinnacle of moving from, 'I'm going to always want to stay with what I know' or 'I'm going to try something new,'" she says. "And this is that trying something new and finding that love for that something new. It just sparks life curiosity."

Field trips: "It's just a whole different experience"

Wayne CountyA student from Kosciusko Middle School in Hamtramck takes a field trip to Nankin Mills Interpretive Center.Many Southeast Michigan parks offer free or reduced-price field trips for underserved schools in the region. For example, a 2019 grant from the DTE Energy Foundation and a 2022 grant from the Nature Conservancy allowed Wayne County Parks to provide free field trips to Nankin Mills Interpretive Center and Crosswinds Marsh for 3,400 students from ​​Detroit, Hamtramck, Romulus, Inkster, and Ecorse.

"We have teachers all the time that tell us that without the reduced cost, or the transportation fees being waived, that they would not be able to bring the kids on a field trip," says Kim Healy, manager of recreation at Wayne County Parks. "Bringing the kids to the park for the hands-on experience is just something that can't be learned in a textbook. We think it's really important."

Healy says students respond enthusiastically to having first-time experiences in nature, such as canoeing or seeing the bald eagles who call Crosswinds Marsh home.

"They might have read about a bald eagle," she says. "But to actually see the nest or to possibly see the bald eagle, it's just a whole different experience."
Wayne CountyStudents from Kosciusko Middle School in Hamtramck take a field trip to Nankin Mills Interpretive Center.
Similarly, the Huron-Clinton Metroparks' Get Out and Learn (GOAL) program offers free field trips for schools that are at least 50% economically disadvantaged according to data from the Center for Educational Performance and Information. Jaworski says GOAL currently serves about 400 teachers, offering not only free programming but also a reimbursement up to $500 for transportation costs.
Huron-Clinton MetroparksA Metroparks school field trip.
"It is our goal for all students to get out into the outdoors and explore and have that hands-on, science-based learning," she says. "And to be able to have that hands-on, science-based learning, we needed to break down some barriers, and transportation is a huge barrier for many schools and field trips."

Outreach programming: "Now science is good for me"

Some parks overcome underserved schools' transportation cost barriers by bringing educational outreach programming to those schools for free or a reduced price. 

"One of the biggest issues for classrooms to get out to us is funding for the bus," Blumka says. "It doesn't matter how cheap we make our programming for them. It's still sometimes a struggle for those classrooms to afford a bus to come to us. So it's really important that we have services that classrooms can utilize that come to them and bring nature to them."
Oakland CountyOakland County Parks staff at a nature table.
For example, Oakland County's Recreation Assistance Partnership Program (RAPP) offers free recreational and nature education programming to schools, municipalities, and nonprofits. Oakland County Parks staff often work tables at these events, showing off taxidermy, furs, or bones of native animals. Blumka says these programs offer many young participants their first opportunity to see common animals like beavers. 

"Students are really excited because all of our presentations have a hands-on component," Blumka says. "There's a craft or an activity or something they can touch. We get a lot of 'oohs' and 'aahs' out of kids and a lot of big smiles."

The Metroparks' Supplemental Science program is a particularly robust example of outreach programming. In the 2023-2024 school year, the Metroparks offered weekly programming in 11 fourth-, fifth-, and eighth-grade classrooms at John R. King Academy. Jaworski says Supplemental Science programming follows Next Generation Science Standards so that it "dovetails into what the teachers need." The program grew out of Metroparks staff's existing relationship with Samuel when she was promoted to assistant principal of John R. King Academy.

"I reached out to her and I said, 'What would help?'" Jaworski says. "As opposed to us coming in and saying, 'This is what we can offer you,' what do you need? And she said, 'We really need supplemental science lessons.'"
Huron-Clinton MetroparksA Supplemental Science lesson.
Students have responded well to the programming, particularly the hands-on science experiments it offers.

"The reason why I hated science is because I didn’t think it was good for me," one fourth-grader said in response to a Metroparks survey. "Now science is good for me. It’s perfect for me now. I learn more stuff than usual.”

"I'm really excited ... to see what we're going to be able to do"

Park staff are continuing to innovate in supporting underserved schools, and they hope to continue expanding such programming in the future. Moving beyond the traditional approaches of field trips and outreach programming in schools, some Metroparks staff have trained teachers in underserved schools on the state's Michigan Environmental Education Curriculum Support (MEECS) units. The units are designed to help students "learn about Michigan's economy and environment through inquiry oriented, data-based lessons."

"Maybe the teachers want to expand their knowledge to the outdoors and help take students to the out of doors so the students are safe, so the students feel comfortable," Jaworski says. "So what activities can they do? These things aren't always taught in college. These are things that you learn along the way with that continuing education. So we wanted to offer that to the teachers as a resource for them."

Similarly, Blumka hopes to continue expanding Oakland County Parks' offerings for free and reduced-price field trips and outreach programs. She notes that supporting greater participation in school field trips to nature and farm education centers is a goal of the Oakland County Parks millage set to go before voters on Nov. 5.

"I think that equity is going to be a focus of our parks system in the future," she says. "I'm really excited ... to see what we're going to be able to do for schools and teachers."

Patrick Dunn is the lead writer for the Equity in Our Parks series. He's also the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and editor.

Photos courtesy of Huron-Clinton Metroparks, Oakland County, and Wayne County.