From the Highlander: SEA Term at St. Margaret’s – Immersing Students in the Experience of Learning

This is a feature from the Spring 2026 Highlander, a digital issue published at smeshighlander.org. 

St. Margaret’s visual arts teacher Joe Hoff is a photographer and outdoorsman who has long been passionate about exploring, studying and advocating for the natural world.

His interest in the history of California—and specifically California bears like the once-plentiful grizzly donning the state’s iconic flag—was the spark for a new experiential education course Mr. Hoff is creating at St. Margaret’s. When it’s rolled out next school year, the course will seek to explore a driving question:

“Under the Bear Flag” and more than 35 courses like it are currently under construction, part of a transformational academic program coming to St. Margaret’s Episcopal School. Developed and taught by St. Margaret’s expert professional community, the St. Margaret’s Exploration Academy—or SEA Term–will be a defining learning experience for Upper School and Middle School students grades 6-12 when it launches at the start of the 2026-2027 school year. 

SEA Term will engage students in purposeful, immersive learning that is academically vigorous, intellectually transformative and emotionally resonant. Students will enroll in a SEA Term course that will meet nine times throughout the school year and culminate in a five-day intensive immersive experience using San Juan Capistrano, the region, and the world as a classroom.

“Experiential learning holds that curiosity, challenge and connection are essential to a meaningful education,” said Dr. Ryan Carey, St. Margaret’s director of experiential education and extensions who developed SEA Term with a working group of professional community members from across different divisions, as well as Upper School Principal Amy Roberts and Middle School Principal Mike Allison. “It is not just about hands-on activities; it is a structured, intentional approach that prioritizes the process of learning over the product.”

For Upper School students who enroll in “Under the Bear Flag” with Mr. Hoff, they will learn about the history of California, the influence the grizzly bear once had in the state, and the impact the black bear has today. They will explore the relationship between humans and California’s vast wild spaces, the efforts made to keep bears wild and the work of wildlife agencies to manage species in pursuit of the greater good.

The course will conclude with a road trip across California, where students will camp on public lands, learn about California’s diverse ecosystems, visit bears at wildlife rehabilitation facilities and, hopefully, spot wildlife as they “work to help our California State bear biologists as citizen scientists.”

“I want students to understand that public lands like national forests and national parks are important and make our country unique, that our wildlife is held in a public trust, and that it is our responsibility to protect the land and the animals as citizens, or we will lose them like we did the California grizzly,” Mr. Hoff said.

Mr. Hoff and the St. Margaret’s teachers leading SEA Term courses are hard at work developing the curriculum, and time has been carved out for course refinement during professional-community in-service days and morning meetings throughout this school year. 

While many of the SEA Term courses are interdisciplinary at its core, there are courses planned around U.S. and world history, English, film, biology and life sciences, math, entrepreneurship, astronomy, marketing, world languages and more.

The SEA Term courses will be finalized this spring and officially roll out at the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year. Courses will meet in nine 90-minute blocks during the school year, about once a month, and conclude with an immersive week of field study at the end of May.

The courses under construction are wide-ranging, engaging and poised to be unforgettable learning experiences for students. One example is from Upper School English teacher Michele St. John and history teacher Chase Robinson, who are collaborating on a course titled “From Kings to Curtain Calls: The History of England, Art and Performance in Drama and Film.” It stems from the study of William Shakespeare in the Upper School and the playwright’s enduring influence over storytelling, culture and society. Students will participate in acting, directing and scriptwriting workshops while exploring dramatic traditions and performance styles dating back centuries.

“I love approaching Shakespeare through performance—getting students on their feet, becoming ‘players’ or ‘groundlings’, asking questions of the characters, and discovering how the rhythm of iambic pentameter resembles today’s hip-hop, as an example” Mrs. St. John said. “SEA Term felt like the perfect opportunity to expand what I love teaching in English and explore how Shakespeare has influenced performance and contemporary drama.”

Mrs. St. John’s and Mr. Robinson’s course will culminate in a trip to London, where they will immerse in English history and theater. The visit will include viewing performances at the Globe Theatre and in the West End, where students will seek to answer several driving questions, notably:

Locally, a Middle School course titled “Taste the World: Cooking, Culture and the Skills That Nourish Life” seeks to drive discussion and learning around food and its impact on community, culture and the planet. In the course, taught by Rian Otto, students will learn about food insecurity in their community, discover how different cultures transform a single ingredient into a culinary masterpiece, and visit locations around Southern California like The Ecology Center, Little Saigon in Westminster and Mercado Gonzalez in Costa Mesa, as they explore driving questions like:

Each SEA Term course is structured around such driving questions, and concludes with field work that actively engages students not just with knowledge, but with people and places around the world – such as the Globe Theatre in London, a national park in California’s Sierra Nevadas or a community of food lovers right here in Orange County.

Dr. Carey, Mrs. Roberts and Mr. Allison have led workshops and presentations around SEA Term as teachers continue to refine their courses and prepare for Upper School and Middle School student enrollment during the spring’s traditional course-selection period. Teachers are also learning more from one another about the power of experiential education, including insight from St. Margaret’s college counselors on how SEA Term will be perceived in the college admissions process.

“Colleges ultimately want to get to know the humans behind the letters and numbers that tend to dominate the admissions process,” said Ben Lah, St. Margaret’s associate director of college counseling. “They are curious about how students think and what they would add to their communities. There is tremendous value in academic and personal qualities that cannot be coached or test prepped. They can only be developed through experience.”

The SEA Term aligns well with the school’s vigorous academic curriculum, which currently boasts 26 Advanced Placement classes and nine post-AP classes. The curriculum of the SEA Term will continually evolve, with new courses each year designed to inspire, challenge and excite students on their learning journey.

“SEA Term invites us to design learning with purpose, to venture beyond the familiar, to ask better questions, and to make learning matter,” Dr. Carey said. “We pair academic vigor with real-world relevance, ask consequential questions, and learn with people and place, not just about them.”