A strong believer in the importance of ocean literacy because “you’re only going to care about something that you love and you’re only going to love something that you know,” Vieja Valley School principal Barbara LaCorte, who will move to Hope School in the fall, spends most of her time away from school either on or near the water.
LaCorte’s dedication to the ocean and its creatures is so strong that she was recently honored as Volunteer of the Year by the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, traveling to Washington with her daughter, Lindsay, to receive the award.
Contributing more than 200 volunteer hours to the Channel Islands Naturalist Corp. (“like the park rangers of the islands”) last year, LaCorte was involved in a number of projects, including creating a multimedia presentation for the speakers’ bureau, The Channel Islands A-Z; and volunteering for a research study on Xantu’s murrelet, an endangered bird species that only nests on the Channel Islands.
“They are this just amazing little bird,” LaCorte said of the murrelet. “We’re out in the middle of the night in zodiacs counting birds and crawling in the back of caves looking for eggs.”
Imagine what a kick her students at Vieja Valley School would have gotten from seeing their principal climbing in caves.
LaCorte also worked on another research project doing photo identification of blue and humpback whales, conducted numerous community outreach events, and gave regular whale-watching tours on the Santa Barbara Condor.
While it’s hard to fathom someone with such a demanding job doing so much volunteer work during her “off” time, LaCorte said, “I think that you make time for the things that you love to do. It’s been a wonderful thing for me.
“The intensity of my job, I have the balance of the end of the week I go out on the water and I watch whales. It just restores me.”