Think of an animal that serves as a role model. If “oyster” didn’t spring to mind, you haven’t met Laura Solomon, co-owner of the first floating oyster farm in Georgia. 

“When you see oysters on the wild banks, you realize how powerful they are,” Solomon told her audience at the Georgia Resiliency Conference on Jekyll Island in October. “They protect species. They’re a habitat creator. They stay their whole lives in one place, and the whole time they’re giving back to their community. They filter the water, they clean their place, right?” 

These traits, plus others – like the historical and economic significance of oyster production – make oysters a focus for not only educating Coastal Georgia’s schoolchildren, but instilling in them a sense of place.

That’s why Solomon co-founded ECO, or “Education, Community, Oysters,” a nonprofit that draws on her background as an educational consultant as well her ongoing entrepreneurial  effort as the CEO of Tybee Oyster Company to train teachers, facilitate field trips and bring scientific inquiry into classrooms. 

Launched in July 2024, the ECO program is in full swing this school year. 

Finding your place in middle school

Seventh-grade students at Garrison School for the Arts ride aboard the Island Explorer as they tour the Tybee Oyster Company farm in the Bull River near Wilmington Island. Nov. 21, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

On the last day of school before the Thanksgiving holiday, ECO herded 26 seventh graders from Garrison School for the Arts in Savannah aboard the Island Explorer pontoon boat at the Bull River. The destination was the Tybee Oyster Company’s floating oyster farm about 20 minutes downstream toward Wassaw Sound.  

All the students live in Chatham County. The school itself is in downtown Savannah and many of the kids live in Pooler, a western suburb. But when STEAM (Science,Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) teacher Laura Ike asked them, few students considered themselves coastal residents, she said. 

Some hadn’t been on a boat before. Some had never really seen the marsh, or only glimpsed it from a car. 

As they motored along the Bull River, Captain Mike Neal of Bull River Cruises and ECO program coordinator Anna Roach peppered the middle schoolers with running commentary to keep their eyes off their phones. 

“Does anyone know what kind of bird that is?” Roach says as the sleek, long-neck creature flies by. “That’s a cormorant, and they actually can dive underwater, and they primarily eat shrimp, and so their poop is like bright pink.”

Solomon read inspiration from a statistic that six of 10 young adults live within 10 miles of where they grew up. 

“So if we can capture 60% of students and keep them engaged in their place and anchored to how they can make it better, then we’ve really hit a good success vendor,” Solomon said at the conference. “Students can start to see themselves as part of a living system. If they’re in their place and they know they’re close to it, they can feel empowered to be a part of that.” 

Employees of the Tybee Oyster Company harvest oysters at their farm in the Bull River near Wilmington Island. Nov. 21, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

Arriving at the farm site, they meet Tyler Cyronak, who runs the Coastal Carbon Laboratory at Georgia Southern University.  He sits at the stern of his boat scraping algae and barnacles off an orange buoy with a putty knife. The buoy holds sensors collecting data on “pH, chlorophyll, turbidity, oxygen, temperature, salinity, something called F Dom, which is organic matter, Cyronak shouted over to the class. 

The Tybee Oyster Company sits in the middle of three leases, two with active farms. The students get to see both in action. At the Savannah Oyster Company, workers pressure wash the flip baskets to keep marine growth off.  At Solomon’s farm, Tybee Oyster Company, the farm manager and two ranch hands sort oysters by size,  tumbling them through mesh of increasing size. 

With little delay, the kids get hands on with collecting data, too. Each student gets a turn with a refractometer, dabbing a few drops of estuary water on the hand-held instrument and holding it up to the light to read the salinity. It’s about 30 parts per thousand at the oyster farm, with Wassaw Island in the distance and the open ocean’s 35 ppt salinity beyond that.  

Garrison School for the Arts seventh-grader Zyeire Jones measures water salinity as part of a tour of the Tybee Oyster Company farm in the Bull River near Wilmington Island. Nov. 21, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

Mason Roberson, a 12-year-old with a mischievous air, goes a step further than the refractometer, tasting the salty water himself. Just a drop licked off his finger, out of sight of the teachers but not of the other students. “You’re gonna catch a brain-eating amoeba,” his seatmate warns before throwing caution to the wind and tasting the water himself. (The unheeded warning was also unneeded: the so-called brain eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, is a freshwater threat.)

Roach points out the various growths on the black baskets that hold the growing oysters. The discussion goes momentarily sideways with a memorable mispronunciation. 

“If you see a vibrant green growth on there, that’s this thing that’s called vulva,” Roach said, speaking through the boat’s PA system. 

Heads swing to attention. “Called what?! What’s it called?” students ask.

“Sea lettuce. And Ulva is the scientific name,” Roach corrects herself and hurries to her next point. “And it is this bright green sea lettuce.  Laura actually saw a sea turtle munch along and eat on the baskets.”

Isabella Taylor, 12, pays rapt attention and claps in delight when she answers a question right. The field trip fits her learning style.

“I don’t remember in words, I remember in pictures,” she said.

For Ike, an experienced teacher who has taken previous classes to Wassaw Island to study coastal ecology, this trip was  “a total bell ringer for the STEAM paradigm.”  

“This trip was even more potent in that students were exposed to a sustainable business model (and lots of cool technology),” she wrote in an email to The Current GA.

Deep dive at the maritime school

Just a week before the oyster farm field trip, ECO staffers and volunteers led classroom exercises for third graders at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy. 

Going to school at the beach helps these students identify as coastal dwellers themselves. Lots of hands go up to the question, “Who has eaten oysters?” Even many who haven’t eaten them have been to oyster roasts. The students, though only third graders, are well versed in everything else oyster, too. They know where oysters live – the brackish water of the salt marsh And what they eat – plankton.

ECO Program Coordinator Anna Roach teaches a class on aquaculture to third-grade students at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

Roach draws them into the oyster life cycle with questions about their own lives. “Raise your hand if your birthday is January, February or March,” she begins and goes through each quarter.

“Oysters respond to environmental cues, so they’re going to be all born in a few months’ time as the water starts to get warmer,” Roach said. She likens an oyster’s birth to the moment the tiny creatures stop free floating and attach to something.  That’s called the pediveliger stage. To help kids remember, ECO staffers often connect Latin roots to everyday experience. 

“What do you put your feet on on a bicycle?” Solomon asks.  “The pedal!” comes the response.

“Do you see any similarities to this word here?  So what do you think that could mean?”

“Foot!” 

“Yeah, so just like you put your foot on a pedal, when they release this foot, they become a pediveliger stage oyster, and that’s when they start to look for something to attach,” Solomon tells them, noting as an aside that they’ll thank her when they take the SAT.

TIMA was a natural place to get the ECO program geared up. Not only are the students already steeped in seaside science, with the beach just blocks away, but Solomon and cofounder Katie Holliday have ties to the school. Solomon was director of growth and planning and is now a strategic advisor for the charter school. Holliday is TIMA’s  leader in residence.

The main hands-on event for the third graders this day is dissecting an oyster, and watching its beating heart under magnification. 

ECO Program Coordinator Anna Roach shows students how to dissect an oyster at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

Luca Haag and Clare Cowart examine the anatomy of an oyster at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

“Let’s look close,” Jax Stubblefield, 8, said with a dramatic flourish. “Look, there’s the heart,” he said, correctly pointing to it with a pin. 

Observations about oysters written by a third-grader at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

Nearby, Annabelle Lee Beatrice Phillips, 8, said she had been to an oyster roast recently. “I was kinda like, ‘this one looks weird.’ It was kinda mushy and at first I didn’t really like it. Then the second time I tried it was delicious.” 

Observations about oysters written by a third-grader at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

At a sorting table, kids used digital calipers to measure the length of farmed oyster shells, recording how many were large enough to sell at 2 inches or bigger and how many they would have to put back to grow a bit longer if they were still in the flip farm. 

Rhonda Navon, 9, chooses a purplish shell for it pretty color and measures it. 

“2.48,” she says. “Sell it!” 

It’s clear this part of the lesson has an economic component. Solomon finds a myriad of subjects to connect to oysters.

“We’ve done history lessons with students where we talked about tabby,” she said.

No matter the subject, though, it’s ultimately about identity, connecting students to where they’re from. 

Third-grade teacher John Klaris teaches students about oysters at the Tybee Island Maritime Academy on Tybee Island. Oct. 30, 2025. Credit: Justin Taylor/The Current GA/Catchlight Local/Report for America

“So it’s not just limited to science, but really rounding out the identity work,” Solomon said. “So when students dissect an oyster, we really lean into that they’re not just learning about a place. They’re learning from their place.”

Oysters aren’t the only keystone species that can provide a sense of place, Solomon said. Every ecosystem has examples of these animals or plants on which many other species depend. Gopher tortoises, longleaf pines, and alligators also do the job on the coastal plain.

“This is about helping children find their place, their purpose and their passion,” Solomon said. “So oysters is our metaphor, but anyone can have a different hook point.”

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Type of Story: Feature

A feature is a story that is less tied to daily news but brings insight into a community issue or topic.