Students Uncover Lessons When They Go Spelunking

It could have been just another rabbit hole, but the red peace sign marked the spot.

Wednesday morning, 22 seventh-graders from Spring Hill's Gulf Coast Academy of Science and Technology tramped along a path in the Withlacoochee State Forrest, dodging branches and sidestepping logs.

Decked out in hardhats, headlamps and gloves, they were on a mission to go spelunking - or, in more common terms, find and explore several area caves, all just beyond the Hernando County line in Citrus County.

Splitting into smaller groups, the cave known as "Peace" drew particular thrills.

One by one, students descended a narrow, barred-off crevice in the ground, noticeable only by a peace symbol painted onto the trunk of a nearby oak tree and moss-covered limestone, poking out of the soil.

"You're going to get dirty anyway, so stop being little girls and just do it," declared Mariah Howie, 13, admonishing her peers for hesitating.

Once inside, the adolescents shrieked with delight, eagerly exploring every inch of the dark cavern's gray walls. Under the watchful eye of Joseph Gatti, Gulf Coast's director of curriculum and instruction, they took turns disappearing around a rocky corner and emerging on the other side, unscathed - first a gloved hand, then a bright-yellow hardhat, then a body.

"Let's go again," exclaimed Marion Mills, 12.

"Cool, I didn't die," said her classmate, Zach Fender, also 12.

Fear was fleeting, as the adolescents continued to wriggle through nooks and crannies, examining the water droplets forming on ceiling formations known as "soda straw" stalactites, long-since plucked off by overly-eager visitors.

"The upside to experiential education is that students have a lot more retention (of the material being taught)," he said. "The downside is that it requires a lot of gear and planning."

An extension of the school's geology program, school officials obtained permits from Florida's Division of Forestry for the trip, which included explorations into four of the area's caves: Peace, Girl Scout, Danger and Dr. Dames' (also known as Dames).

The daylong trip also included several hours of instruction in a clearing in the forest, as the students whipped out folding chairs and clipboards to complete worksheets on geological formations and safety protocol.

Since all four of the caves have been damaged by careless patrons in the past, the trip also provide the groundwork for a lesson about the importance of preserving natural resources, Gatti said.

Hernando County's first and only charter school, Gulf Coast is a public school that is privately-run and serves 116 middle school students, with seven fulltime and three part-time teachers. The school has a particular focus on hands-on outdoor activities, with all students attending a field trip once a week in groups of 22.

The school has received an "A" rating and met the state's Adequate Yearly Progress standards each year since opening in 2003. It receives frequent praise from the Hernando County School Board and has a running waiting list for acceptance each year.

The students emerged from Peace Cave triumphant, hands and T-shirts smudged with dirt.

"I'm perfectly clean," Mariah said.

But it was only their first of four missions. As they reconvened with their mud-covered peers for lunch, it became obvious that Peace Cave may have actually been the "clean" cave.

Not that that bothered anyone, of course.

"At our school, you have to love outdoor activities," Gatti said.

For more information, go to www.gulfcoastacademy.org.