"The idea was basically handed to me," by John Alexander, the school's former principal, she said. Connors said Alexander was a proponent of project-based learning, which means students learn partly by doing projects.

It is important for students to learn about the environment, said Connors because students are naturally curious about their surroundings.

The outdoor classroom has been a part of the fourth graders' curriculum since the beginning of the school year. In the fall, students helped plant grass in the outside the classroom and wrote journal entries about their experience.

Connors said that kids are spending more and more time indoors. She thinks that if environmental education doesn't start early people have no reason to care about the environment as adults.

Part of the outdoor classroom used to be a thicket of woods; loggers thinned some of the trees and created a walking path. Connors says that limestone gravel will soon be going down on the trail, partially donated by Charles W. Barger & Son.

To turn the outdoor classroom into a reality, Connors said, she has written three grants. The project has received more than $8,000 from a Chesapeake Bay Grant, from the Virginia Environment Endowment and from Boxerwood Gardens in Lexington.

This is Connors' first year at Fairfield, but she has a long history of working with the environment. She got her masters degree in environmental studies in 2000 and worked in the science labs at Washington and Lee from 2001-2004, but didn't feel that she was really using her degree.

Connors started working with Boxerwood Gardens and says she "was just having a lot of fun working with the kids." She decided to go back to school and get her masters in teaching in 2004.

Connor’s students also gave a lesson to fifth grade students about trees when students were required to participate in the National Arbor Day Foundation poster contest. RIFFING ON A THEME OF "Trees Are Terrific," fourth graders made an acrostic poem using the theme and taught the fifth graders.

Connors also incorporated Fairfield's family reading night into the project and got the entire school involved. When parents and children visited her classroom, they planted wildflowers that will go in the classroom this spring.

"They still wanted to do it," Connors said, even when the parents and students found out they couldn't take the flowers home.

Thirteen "Learn and Service Grants" totaling $358, 270 will give nearly 12,000 students the opportunity to learn about the environment. According to the Virginia Department of Education, the grants will help the Chesapeake 2000 Agreement become a reality because all Virginia students will have “a meaningful watershed experience” before they graduate.

Elise Sheffield, education steward at Boxerwood Gardens in Lexington, says the grants will serve community children for the next three years.

Local students will be participating in the "Slow the Flow" project, starting this spring. They will measure water quality in the Maury River watershed and perform conservation activities. One focus will be on a micro invertebrate survey where students will wade into the river or creek and capture critters. Sheffield says that's a way to tell a lot about water quality because certain creatures cannot survive if water conditions are not good.

Connors says her outdoor classroom isn't tied to these grants, but she's "hoping to shake hands, lock hands" with the children participating in the program. She said students in the Slow the Flow project will be helping out with the Arbor Day celebration.

Sheffield says it's exciting that sixth graders from Lexington, Buena Vista and the county are participating in the "Slow the Flow" program because "they usually do everything separately."

The grant focuses on watershed water issues because all water sources, including Woods Creek, eventually lead back to the Chesapeake Bay, an endangered water source.

Sheffield said toxic runoff and soil sediment that seep into the creeks and rivers and flow eventually to the Bay. Slowing the flow of these toxins is vital to the Bay's waters. If the flow of water is not slowed, she said, it will lead to flooding and environmental degradation at all levels.

The goal of the program is to make the 350 some 6^th graders watershed investigators, said Sheffield. The children will know enough to identify problems associated with the watershed and what causes these problems and be able to fix them. She likened the three-year program to C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation), a popular television show.

Like Connors' outdoor classroom, the watershed program there will also have a classroom component, where students will learn vocabulary, concepts, and other important knowledge before applying their skills in the field.

Each of the four participating middle schools will have a full day experimenting and doing activities at a river that leads to the Maury.

"It's going to be very fun," Sheffield said, "very hands on."

Students will really take on the role of watershed investigators when they begin phase two of the grant program. They will be responsible for investigating their school grounds, identifying a problem and coming up with a solution to the problem.

"Children can feel empowered by being part of a solution instead of being paralyzed by a problem," said Sheffield.

Local students got the opportunity to investigate close to home. They explored and experimented in Woods Creek on Wednesday, trying to find out why it floods so easily.

The grant also pays for one field trip a year for 20 students to the Chesapeake Bay.

"They'll complete the circle," said Sheffield. Students will be able to take what they've learned locally and apply it to the Bay.

"Any chance to give kids real-world, hands-on learning benefits everyone," Sheffield said.