Alumni Highlight: Sarah Covington, Hoover HS

Sarah Covington, Group Leader

Sarah on an early morning dive at Forfar!

How long have you been bringing students to Forfar Field Station?

I first visited Forfar my second year of teaching in the 2002-2003 school year. When I started teaching, I taught biology/marine biology and now I teach mainly biomedical sciences at Hoover High School in North Canton, Ohio.

What has it been like seeing the changes at Forfar over time?

Visiting every year allows you to see the island and people change, like how we visited before and after the roads were paved. I’ve seen BAMSI start up and watched as the staff members grow up, such as Randal who was about two years old when I started coming.  

Every once in a while, we’d come down and one of our former students was an intern. I think we’ve had three or four former students who returned to intern on the island. Some of them were just like, “I’ll be back”. Some of the kids just take the class because taking a marine biology course is so exciting, especially when it culminates in a trip to Andros. But the kids who are actually interested in marine biology as a career, those are the ones that end up coming back. And obviously there has been lots of change with the grounds and the buildings, like the trees and landscaping, since it can all look completely different after a hurricane.

Have you been staying in one of our newly renovated cabins?

I have and it’s amazing! It’s so nice. Before I came to Forfar for the first time, the teachers who trained me, they used to camp on the little beach just North when they visited.  They would hang their shower bags up to heat up during the day so they could shower at night. So I was expecting it to be very rustic my first time and then when I came down it was like, oh there’s showers and this is nice.  Over the years they’ve fixed up roofs, the grounds, and now the cabins look amazing. We’re really happy with the upgrades.

Did you get to spend some time with Ben Bohl over the years?

Oh yeah! Back in the day, an IFS staff member would always meet us in Fort Lauderdale where we would spend the night before flying over to Andros the next morning. Some years Ben would pick us up and take us to the airport. He would always make sure to get donuts and have us fly donuts over for the staff. Other times, Ben would be here on island. Then, as his health deteriorated, we saw less and less and less of him. But he was pretty much who we talked to on the phone to organize each trip for the first several years.

I’ve always appreciated that the Bahamians were included in the staff and that our day trips include meeting locals. I think that’s probably what our students bring up the most in their journals; sitting and talking to the locals like Terpy, Virmeno, and Maryanne and a lot of their entries were about Daddy Cool and what he was saying. For a lot of our students it’s their first time on a plane and first time out of the country. It allows them to meet people who don’t have the same kind of material stuff they have at home but are so happy, generous, and welcoming. Like Otis, who always has a handful of fruit for whoever visits. I think the cultural aspect of it probably had a lot to do with how Archie and Ben respected the locals.

What did your group enjoyed most this year at Forfar?

This might be my favorite year of all my trips. It’s such a nice mix of educational staff and we only had 20 kids. Sometimes we bring 38 kids and it’s just a lot of bodies in the water at the same time. They were really impressed with the main reef, it looked really good this year. I saw a lot of live coral and it was very fishy out there today, so very good. I think the students saw everything at its best which is nice. They really liked the interns and of course loved the Red Bays trip. They thought everything they saw snorkelling was huge. They have no reference so to them a hogfish the size of a plate is huge, but we’ve seen hogfish out there the size of small ponies. The students just loved everything, especially the blue holes.

Sarah and her students from their recent February 2020 Trip to Forfar.

Is it a rewarding experience for you to come to Forfar?

Definitely, it is. It’s a lot of work planning a trip like this. But this week was just so relaxing. The staff were just so safety-first, extremely helpful, and everything in all the cabins works. It was just nice; it was the perfect week. It’s rewarding and I love that IFS has programming for the local Bahamians. It’s such a neat educational experience for the kids. I think over the years, a lot of the students have become more conservation minded as well, so they’re starting to think about some of the choices they make and how it effects the oceans. In our last class before visiting Forfar, we had a speaker giving a coral lecture talking about coral propagation. So then the students came down and were all really excited hearing about the Forfar coral propagation. I think it really is life changing for the students, even if it’s small things, those small things add up, and you get to say that you were a part of that and it’s a good feeling.

What have been your favorite memories at Forfar over the years?

It was always my birthday so I think my 27th through 35th birthdays were probably always spent on the island. Everyone would always let me pick an adventure.  Another favorite is the memories I made with the people here. One year we visited earlier than usually and I heard Maryanne say, “oh, you’re early this week,” like she knows our group and she knows the adults. Or Otis, he’ll look around at our group and say, “Where’s Sarah? Oh, there’s Sarah!” And that’s crazy since he only sees me once a year for 15 minutes and there he is asking for me by name. The kind of relationship that has formed between people who visit Forfar and the different Androsians on the island, it’s just a beautiful thing to see those relationships. That, and probably the first time I saw a reef shark in the ocean. The first time I saw a hogfish, I almost lost my mind. It was the size of a child and it’s so cool to be able to identify them after learning from a book. It’s neat to see how things change too. It’s nice knowing people care and are putting time, effort, and money into continually improving this place.

Sarah assisting students during a beach clean up on Andros

What does Forfar, overall, mean to you?

I think Forfar epitomises hands on learning because we can sit in front of these kids for seventeen, 3-hour courses and they’re excited, but it’s nothing compared to when they have their faces in the water the first time, and are like, “I saw a beaugregory!” and they know it because we had them learn it. That excitement wasn’t in the classroom, that excitement was in the field. That’s probably the most meaningful thing as a teacher, to see the learning in action, and see their faces light up when they are able to identify or see something for the very first time.