A refuge for real-world learning.

I'm flipping through the cable stations and as usual with 120 channels to choose from, there is nothing worth watching. So I find myself watching C-SPAN.... Congressman Jim Moran was talking, and all of a sudden he is talking about deer hunts at Mason Neck [Wildlife Refuge].... He mentioned that managers there had given him data saying that the forest had been depleted seven-fold because of the deer overpopulation, and in doing so he referred to data collection done by students with the use of a deer exclosure....

It occurred to me that this was the first time in 10 years of school that something I had done was used for more than the purpose of grading, but for something that actually made a difference. I want to thank you for the opportunity. It has given me more incentive to work than anything else that I have ever done in school.

Sincerely, Jay Briar

Each year about 75 9th graders like Jay work as partners with the managers of Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge, an eastern deciduous forest about 40 minutes from the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in northern Virginia.

Our students have inventoried the biota of a pond, collected five years of deer browse preference data, and contributed natural resource data for a geographical information system for the refuge. A sight-impaired student used a computer-assisted drafting and design system to propose changes to the outdoor environmental center to make it more accessible to students with …