SACO — Surrounded by seaweed, rocks, the Atlantic Ocean and dozens of tidal pools, Minot sixth-grader Nick Jordan smiled Thursday when he found a tiny green crab.

“We’re learning about tide pools, what the abiotic and the biotic factors are,” Jordan said.

He liked the outdoors class. “It’s kind of cool to be down here.”

A few feet away, Poland sixth-grader Gabriella Tompkins cradled a small hermit crab she discovered. “I just looked in looking for a snail, but it wasn’t a snail. It was a hermit crab,” she said.

A few rocks away, students were holding, and humming to, periwinkles. Ferry Beach Ecology School naturalist Krysta Zambroski explained.

“The periwinkles really like the vibration of our voice,” she said. “So when you hum to them, it’s soothing. They come out. They flair their antennae around. It’s a good way to see what’s inside the shell. There are periwinkles around here all over the place.”

On Thursday, 137 sixth-graders from Minot, Mechanic Falls and Poland got firsthand lessons in Earth science from the ecology school. The private, nonprofit beach school teaches students about the environment by showing them, said Executive Director Drew Dumsch.

Teachers do a great job teaching science in class. “But at some point when you’re talking about the environment, natural resources, water quality, the best way to do that is get kids right out in the environment. We call it live and unplugged,” Dumsch said. “There’s no, ‘This is a tide pool online.'”

The Ferry Beach school teaches environmental literacy, Dumsch said.

“Not knowing how your environment functions can have negative impacts,” such as climate change and the destruction of animal habitat, he said.. “If you know how the Earth functions, there are sustainable solutions.”

For the past nine years, Poland students have come to the ecology school for a few days. This year was the first time students from the three towns attended, thanks to Poland Spring Bottling Co., said Mechanic Falls-Minot-Poland School Superintendent Dennis Duquette.

Poland Spring paid for Poland students to attend for several years. When the towns merged into one school district last year, the company agreed to pay for sixth-graders in all three towns. The cost for 137 to attend three days and two nights was $24,000.

“That’s a lot of money,” Duquette said. “They believe in it.”

Poland Spring Factory Manager Ray Grady said his company supports students learning how to be environmental stewards. And it’s nice to give back, he said. “We do a lot of things with the schools on purpose. The people who work in my plant live in the three towns.”

After students attend the ecology school, teachers see a difference, Duquette said. Environmental lessons are no longer a chore, he said. “You start talking about recycling, they get it now.”

Jordan May, 11, of Mechanic Falls, said she had learned to think about how certain animals need their environments to survive, and how those environments need protection. When she got home she intended to ask her mother if they could start composting.

Poland student Zach Hatch, 11, said he had learned how “the salt grass sweats salt,” and when tidal pools fill with ocean water and evaporate, it leaves salt which helps certain animals. He said he had learned how important it is not to waste food, how eco-systems need protection.

There’s not much dune grass around beaches, but it plays an important role, Hatch said. The grass and its roots “keep the sand and beach from washing away.”

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Willie Richards, a staff naturalist at Ferry Beach Ecology School, makes a point during an ecology lesson on Ferry Beach in Saco. Sixth-graders from Poland Community School, Minot Consolidated School and Elm Street School spent three days and two nights at the school. Clockwise from top right are Ben Richards, Nick Jordan, Danny Brown, Maddy Childs, Shelby Carter, Skyler Harlow, Isaiah Dubois, Thomas Flint, Patrick Kuklinski, John Kozak, Willie Richards and Nick Lugner.

Isaiah Dubois, 11, a sixth-grader at Minot Consolidated School, holds a lobster claw and an acorn that he found during a scavenger hunt on Ferry Beach. Dubois put the acorn inside the claw.

Kyle Radziszewski, 11, a sixth-grader at Poland Community School, puts his lunch table’s banana peels into the compost bucket at the Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco. Compost is used in the school’s garden to grow fruits and vegetables that the students and staff eat.

Sixth-graders from Poland Community School, Minot Consolidated School and Elm Street School in Mechanic Falls learn lessons in ecology at the Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco.