As Director of Outdoor Education for Los Angeles Audubon, I routinely see over 3,000 students a year on field trips to the Ballona Wetlands and Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. For the most part, we only see these students on one or two field trips, and then they are off to the next grade level and onward.

It is difficult to really quantify the impact of the students’ experience from these trips, but occasionally a past attendee resurfaces, and we find that their field trip(s) really did have an impact on their lives and learning experiences. Ethan Greenberg is one such student, and I had the delightful experience of re-connecting with him last year as he worked on a special project for students deprived of a field trip due to the pandemic. Ethan graciously agreed to be interviewed about his experience at Ballona and the effect that it has had on his life. I am thrilled to share his thoughts with you, and to see that our mission to connect young people with wildlife can be quite substantive.