Teacher uses outdoors as his classroom
By Moriah Balingit, Washington Post
As a child, Liam McGranaghan was obsessed with nature, bringing home critters he found near his home in Fairfax County, raising frogs and turtles in the yard and once coaxing an injured crow back to health.
In his adult life, his obsession was reduced to a hobby as he embarked on a meandering career that took him from a history degree at Virginia Tech to gigs in the construction business. During a lull in work, he started substitute teaching and discovered his passion. After getting a master’s degree in biology, he was hired to teach biology and then environmental science, a career that combined his childhood obsession with his affinity for the classroom.
McGranaghan now teaches environmental science at Loudoun Valley High School, and his unorthodox class gets his teen students into the wild as much as possible. They take field trips in canoes and hike to the woods nearby to study trees and wildlife. Students even suit up in galoshes to wade into a nearby stream to measure its water quality.