Classroom on the Sand with HEARTS Homeschool

Overview

On February 25th, 2025, the International SeaKeepers Society Educational Outreach Team hosted a classroom lesson with 58 students and 10 educators of HEARTS Homeschool Group at the beaches of Von D. Mizell and Eula Johnson State Park in Hollywood, Florida. To start the morning, our Community Engagement Associate, Lillian, and our Educational Outreach Associate, Jack, led an introduction on the park and SeaKeepers’ work before leading a beach and park cleanup covering the three-mile stretch of beach space around the park. Our team was even informed by park staff that these types of events are the only regular events that see the park’s beaches cleaned, so we and the volunteers were hopeful to make a lasting impact by removing trash from the beautiful park. After just forty minutes, our team of volunteers managed to clean and remove 35 lbs of trash from all over the beach, ranging from the waterline to the dunes high up on the sand. Following our cleanup, we discussed some of what we found as well as the implications and alternatives to prevent these common single-use plastics from polluting our beaches and parks of South Florida. We then led an interactive activity and discussion using our Enviroscapes Model Watershed Table, where we highlighted the nature and definition of a watershed to include what it entails as well as modeling the most prevalent types of pollution and their sources. This culminated in allowing our team of students to both begin and observe our dynamic demonstration to show how pollution sources end up in local waterways from rivers all the way to the ocean. We finished the day with a group photo as well as a final discussion on what we learned and a final Q&A about all things oceans. We had an amazing time with the students and teachers of HEARTS Homeschool Group, and we hope to see them at future SeaKeepers events!