Extra Terrestrial

Craig Smith and his high school students turned an empty lot into a wildlife preserve.

Students at Evanston Township High School don’t have to get on a bus to explore the wetlands, the prairie, or the forest. Thanks to Craig Smith, they just walk out of their classroom to an adjoining three-acre tract of school property, for decades occupied by little more than drifting litter and a few parked cars. Using fund-raisers and student volunteers, Smith, who teaches an anatomy and physiology class and AP environmental science at the Illinois school, has turned the former wasteland into a living classroom—a linked trio of ecosystems in which students can see, smell, and...