BOYS RANCH, Texas (KFDA) – Boys Ranch High School science teacher Gary Gill created a nature science research center for his students. Lindsey Stiner is taking a look at how vital this center is for those students in tonight’s Eye on Education.

Appealing to students’ various learning styles and immersing them in a variation of sensory elements is taking what these Boys Ranch High School students are learning on paper and applying it to real life.

“We do the lessons in the class and on paper sometimes and we come out here. It’s just easier to learn stuff if I touch it,” said Conner Helms, a Boys Ranch High School student.

Boys Ranch provides a vast landscape, a great placement for the Nature Science Research Center.

“Working at out here is great, as far as a Science teacher, we have over 100 acres on just the campus and then about another thousand acres across the street we can use. We have five lakes, we have greenhouses and the ranch personal that are always willing and want to help us in the classrooms,” said Gill.

Several greenhouses provide shelter for plants, birds and Coy fish.

An outside classroom, gardening, lakes and landscapes bring lesson plans like food chains and webs to life.

“It’s a way better understanding because you can actually see the things that he’s talking about. As a great teacher that he is, he really explains stuff great in the classroom but it adds a lot more understanding,” said Judah Storybrooks McCullough, another Boys Ranch High School student.

“I definitely believe getting outside of the classroom, just being outside is healthy for them. I also think that a lot of our students were not successful prior to coming here in their classrooms, a lot of them didn’t go to school,” said Gill.

One point every student did make was this: being out in nature, applying their freshly learned knowledge, touching and visually applying those lessons has made a huge difference not only in retaining that knowledge, but enjoying it too.

Copyright 2023 KFDA. All rights reserved.