Environmental Science, taught in the field.
Eight units from ecosystems and energy flow to sustainability and policy — lab-led, mastery-based, and built to AP-level rigor. A student doesn't pass this course by recognizing the right answer. They pass it by demonstrating, in person, that they actually understand it — quadrat in hand.
A full year of environmental science, built around what happens in the field.
Most environmental science courses are a textbook full of facts with a few field trips bolted on. This one is the reverse. Every week is built around a question you answer in the field or the data — with a quadrat, a transect tape, a water-test kit, a public environmental dataset you actually interrogate — and the reading exists to support that work. That is what "lab-led, not textbook-led" means, and it is the single most important thing to understand about how this course runs.
The course is organized as a two-day rhythm: a Concept Day where the idea is introduced and worked through on paper, and an Experiment Day where it becomes real — surveyed, measured, charted — and gets written into a real lab notebook. Between the two days, the student works at home, and that gap is where retention actually consolidates.
Mastery is the progression rule. A student advances through a concept when they can reproduce, explain, and apply it — not when the calendar says so. "Not yet" is the honest, expected default; "mastered" is earned and demonstrated. The rubrics are the instrument that makes that judgment fair and repeatable.
Eight units, in the order they build.
The concept graph runs from how energy moves through an ecosystem up to the policy that governs how we use the planet. Each unit has its own mastery rubric; the full sequence, with the labs and the two-day rhythm, is on the course map.
A year in the field, not behind a screen.
Three doors into the pack.
The course map
The full eight-unit sequence, the labs, and how the two-day rhythm plays out across a school year.
The resources
Every artifact you need to run the course: rubrics, study system, pre-lab checklist, AI-use guide, and more.
The lab notes
Six short essays on why environmental science is taught this way — the thinking behind the method, in plain language.