Norwich — COVID-19 prevented students at the Joshua Center Thames Valley school from taking to the water for their marine sciences and sailing program last year, but that didn’t stop them from getting their hands wet, and dirty.

New England Science & Sailing, based in Stonington, brought a bit of the ocean to students at the school on Stott Avenue in the Norwich business park, where students spread out on the front lawn and dissected squid.

“It was smelly, and I got ink on my hands,” student Izaiah Ramos, 16, of Norwich said Friday during a news conference to announce that NESS has been awarded a new $225,000 three-year grant to continue and expand its marine sciences education partnership with alternative education schools run by Natchaug Hospital, an affiliate of Hartford Healthcare.

The Joshua Center school, which serves up to 50 students in grades 7 through 10 and the Joshua Center Shoreline School in Old Saybrook, which enrolls about 10 students, have been working with NESS already on a three-year $200,000 grant to provide a range of marine sciences education, sailing and kayaking experiences for the students. COVID-19 has disrupted their boating plans, but the students still were able to design wind turbines that generated electricity, build boats out of recycled materials and participate in a regatta.

“Many of our students didn’t know what a regatta was,” Joshua Center Principal Lamirra Simeon said. “NESS exposed our kids to things they would not normally have access to.”

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, attended the announcement that NESS had been awarded the $225,000 competitive grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to extend the program and expand it to the Green Valley School of Natchaug, which serves about 25 elementary school students in Franklin.

The Natchaug schools offer individualized alternative education for students with social, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Simeon told about 24 participants at the announcement Friday that the schools provide small-structured learning environments “to help them find their way,” while learning decision-making, avoiding high-risk behaviors and improved self-esteem. Often, they later return to their former public schools.

Simeon said NESS’s weekly visits to the school allowed students to experience something new and get excited about their science lessons.

“This exposure to new opportunities piqued their curiosity, and our kids were able to dig a little deeper and learn more,” Simeon said. “I would have students come to me and tell me excitedly about the plankton that they found in the water, or how their boat won the regatta or whose boat was the best. This curiosity and desire created lifelong learners ready to explore the world. No one is more excited about NESS being able to return this school year than our students.”

She said NESS educators formed a bond with the students, and she hopes COVID-19 will wane enough to allow the students to go sailing on Long Island Sound as planned.

The new grant also funds a yearlong research component in which Natchaug teachers will put together a marine sciences curriculum for alternative schools throughout the country, said Eric Isselhardt, president of the NESS Foundation. That curriculum will be made available at no cost to teachers across the country. He said that curriculum development plan was a key reason NOAA awarded the new grant.

Isselhardt said everyone at NESS “is passionate” about bringing marine sciences education to alternative schools through sailing, power-boating and marine sciences. All the programs are tied to national science curriculum standards.

“We’re not just doing programs and having fun, although that’s exactly what it looks like,” he said.

c.bessette@theday.com