At Hanauma Bay, 10 students from the Hawai'i Center for the Deaf and Blind recently got a taste of what it's like to be on the other side of the classroom.

For a week, the teenagers from the Kapahulu school boned up for the experience by learning about the geology, geography, reef and history of the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve.

Then, after working on their lessons — some even developing and writing a script of their presentation — they taught groups of three or four elementary students from their school at different areas around the bay on Thursday.

During the three-hour field trip that ended with a scavenger hunt on the beach, they gave lessons on geology, history, the reef, coral reef conservation, and fish and invertebrates.

It was the best way teacher Loretta Finegan-Nelson from the Hawai'i Center for the Deaf and Blind could think of to teach this part of Hawai'i's history and have it mean something to the students in her history class.

Lea Carsrud, marine park specialist with the Hanauma Bay Education Program, was excited about the students' learning and teaching to others, and said it's the best way to instill a sense of stewardship in the land and resources. She adapted many of the verbal pieces of information into more tactile and visual versions for the students.

"I had to adapt because the students from the school learn differently," Carsrud said. "This is the first time we've ever done something like this. We might expand it."

Each year, about 500 groups from the Mainland and Hawai'i schools, senior citizens organizations and musical organizations take the educational tour of the bay, Carsrud said.

It isn't the first time the Hawai'i Center for the Deaf and Blind has taken to the streets to cement the learning. Finegan-Nelson said she has taken students to the Makiki Trail, where they learned what it's like to dig a new trail. She also has taken them to the Animal Foundation, where they learned how to take care of abandoned pets.

"I am trying to hook them up with different volunteer organizations to show them that they are part of the community and that if they work together, they can make a difference," Finegan-Nelson said.

Edmond Thomas, a 14-year-old eighth-grader at the school, used American Sign Language to communicate with the three fifth-graders assigned to him at the bay. He described how volcanoes formed the bay and created limestone and basalt rock. He passed around pictures and showed them samples of the rocks.

The students nodded their head and signed that they understood.

"He's showing them where the craters that formed this bay were," Finegan-Nelson said. "He never stopped teaching, even when he went down to the beach."

Thomas had a great time playing teacher for the morning. In addition to learning about the bay from his classroom teachers, he got more information from the bay's Education Program instructors and did research on his own.

"I felt fine about teaching them," Thomas said in sign language. "I think they all understood. I really enjoyed this."

Eleven-year-old Sydney Carruthers said she had been to the bay before, but never had experienced it like this. In the past, she had come only to look at the bay, not to snorkel or to learn.

She was excited about the experience, linking arms with fellow students and skipping happily from one learning area to another. Her mother, Jennifer Carruthers, who came along on the field trip, said she saw only good in the experience for her daughter and the high school students.

"I think it's great," said Carruthers, who lives in 'Ewa Beach. "I feel that the (older) students should be good role models for the elementary students."

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com.