Field Education Program

The Friends’ Field Education Program builds upon students’ natural enthusiasm for the outdoors, by offering frequent opportunities for students to learn through hands-on and outdoor activities.  The programs reinforce concepts learned in the classroom, increase self-confidence and open students to an array of career opportunities with field trips, after-school clubs, weekend and summer hiking trips. Students may visit the Catskill Watershed area to discover where the water they drink comes from, and restore a streambed or plant trees to prevent erosion while there.  This type of service learning activity makes the study of pollution, conservation and stewardship real, not just an academic exercise. Few students participating in HSES field activities have ever been out of New York City or even visited many of the City’s own natural areas.

The Friends’ staff not only runs environmental programs—on the school’s rooftop garden, in Central Park, and at Gateway National Recreation Area —it also provides much needed support to help individual students participate in other regional and national environmental activities.   In the last year students have:

  • raised trout from eggs for release into the Hudson River;
  • hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail;
  • raised vegetables and herbs important to Italian culture on the School rooftop garden;
  • collected over a ton of debris from the beach at Dead Horse Bay in Gateway National Recreation Area (Brooklyn).

The Friends also sponsors several clubs at the school:

Hiking Club – This club takes monthly trips to visit natural areas in New York City and the surrounding counties while learning about good stewardship of out of doors.

Recycling Club – HSES’ award winning recycling club collects paper waste, bottles and cans from the high school weekly and recycles them. Students learn about recycling issues and emerging opportunities–-batteries, toner cartridges etc.  The club has won the New York City Department of Sanitation’s Golden Apple award multiple times at the borough and city-wide level.

Go Green! – In 2005, HSES registered with the Go Green Initiative, a national campus-based K-12 environmental service program, geared to improve the environmental performance of the high school while promoting learning and community-building. This year the club has focused promoting energy efficient lighting and on recycling cafeteria waste in worm bins.  <read more>