A free after-school program that puts Mobile students in kayaks on Dog River is taking signups.
NextGen Baykeepers, run by the Mobile Parks and Recreation Department and Mobile Baykeeper, is a kayaking and outdoor adventure program for fourth, fifth and sixth graders designed to develop the next generation of environmental leaders.
What Students Do
Participants take part in science, technology, engineering and mathematics activities, art and nature lessons, and guided outdoor activities.
Pairing STEM instruction with time on the water is a deliberate approach. Water quality, watershed function and habitat are abstractions in a classroom and observable facts from a kayak. Students learning about a river while paddling on it tend to retain considerably more of it.
Schedule
The program runs Oct. 6 through Oct. 29, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 6 p.m.
Sessions are held at Dog River Park.
Transportation and a Meal
The logistics are the part that makes the program accessible.
Students can be dropped off at Figures Community Center, where they will receive a meal and then be taken by bus to Dog River Park. Parent pickup takes place at Figures at 6:30 p.m.
That arrangement removes the two obstacles that most often keep children out of after-school programming: getting there and eating beforehand. A 4 p.m. start at a park across town is impossible for a family without a flexible schedule or a second vehicle. A bus from a central community center, with dinner included, is not.
The program is free.
Why Dog River
Dog River is one of Mobile’s principal urban waterways, draining a large portion of the city before reaching Mobile Bay. It is also a long-running focus of local water quality work, which makes it an apt classroom for a program built around environmental stewardship.
Students who spend a month on it in October are the ones most likely to care what happens to it later.