Standing knee-deep in Bear Creek, Vicki Loess and Katrina Pandya sifted through mud and water hunting for creatures, one armed with a net and the other with tweezers and a glass jar.

Before noon, the two Stockbridge High School teachers had unearthed quite a collection from the creek not far from the campus of Oxford College of Emory University --- Asian clams, a dragonfly shell, fly larvae of different types and small crawfish.

When the school year starts, they will bring those specimens back to their classrooms.

"So when our kids do this kind of stuff, we can identify what we look at, because we'll be just a little bit better at it, " Pandya said, inspecting a bug. "It's really cool."

Loess and Pandya are two of 14 Georgia teachers participating in this year's Oxford Institute for Environmental Education.

Housed at Oxford College, the institute helps teachers find new ways to interest their students in science.

Finding the best way to teach science is increasingly important as curriculum and testing requirements toughen. Next school year, educators throughout Georgia will begin teaching a new state science curriculum that is expected to be more focused and more hands-on than previous ones and will introduce some scientific concepts at an earlier age. In 2007, test scores from state science exams will start being used to judge schools' annual academic performance. Student science test scores perennially rank at the bottom throughout Georgia. This year on the high school graduation test, nearly one-third failed the science portion in the worst performance among the four subject areas.

Each day at the Oxford Institute, the teachers and their guides --- three biology professors and a former program participant --- trudge into the woods and streams to perform experiments they can use at their own schools next school year. They have identified trees and plants, studied ant populations using their own food as lures, tested water quality by analyzing stream inhabitants, and looked at frog behavior by catching, dying, releasing and recapturing them.

The two-week program ends today.

Eloise Carter, a biology professor at Oxford College who helps run the institute, said the instructors are trying to introduce a new method of teaching science.

The old way is "you sit down and [teachers] say, 'Here's the experiment we're doing, here's the result you ought to get and work as hard as you can to get the right result, ' " she said. "Well, scientists don't work that way --- there would be no point in doing science if you did it that way. So what we are trying to do, and what the teachers are really working on, is making the students involved in the process and not [just trying to] get the right answer, but actually doing an independent or guided investigation."

The program started 14 years ago when Oxford alumnus William Allgood and his wife, Marguerite, donated the land that now holds the Oxhouse Science Center for use in science education, Carter said. At the time, program leaders were also involved with the Ecological Society of America's plan to connect ecologists with classroom teachers to improve how science was taught.

Ecology, Carter said, is a good avenue for teaching science because "you don't need a lot of equipment --- you just have to open the door and go out into your schoolyard."

This summer, the institute is studying how the program has affected participants' style and effectiveness in the classroom.

During the program, the teachers write out proposals for hands-on investigations to employ during the school year. In November they will return and discuss whether their lessons were successful.

Audra Haywood, a teacher from Redan High School, went into the program doubting she could be helped. But she's been pleasantly surprised.

"I'm here because I teach environmental science, but I find myself inside more than outside and doing more textbook activities than outdoor activities. And the textbook that DeKalb County has for us requires you to be around a lake. And I wanted to see if they could actually help me because . . . all I have is this forest area. But they proved me wrong."

"This is a great field trip, " she told Oxford biology professor Steve Baker earlier this week as she climbed out of the creek.