REDMOND, OR -- Students at Redmond Proficiency Academy are getting a one of a kind experience during the charter school's June term. Blue Humanities - Ocean Stories teaches about the various ways the ocean impacts our lives, and vice versa.

The course was created, and is co-taught, by former RPA teacher George Hegerty. He wrote the curriculum last year as part of his dissertation as a graduate student at UC Davis. RPA Students are studying the Newport area. “They’re doing research in order to how to kind of determine what are the stories that make up how we understand that place. And we’re trying to emulate that with field work experience at the coast.”

Matt Killpack, a co-teacher of the two-week course, says the 14 students get hands-on experience, “Because we’re headed to Newport, we talked about the Dungeness fishing industry as well as the dangers that are associated with the economy based off of a fishery and what’s happening in the world around us.”

Killpack says the class is a collaborative effort with experts, “Biologists and geologists come down and talk with the kids. Oregon State University is sending some of their professors over to discuss what’s happening with the oceans. Especially off the Oregon Coast.”

“We’ll also be going to the aquarium and getting a backstage tour there, and then we’ll go to Hatfield Marine Science Center. So, the students will get a pretty well-rounded look at the type of research and what life’s like in Newport,” says Hegerty.

The class is a partnership with UC Davis and is funded through a grant from the Bodega Marine Laboratory in California.