Jack Shoaf's environmental science class at Shelbyville High School doesn't have many aspiring ecologists, botanists or wildlife ecologists. Most kids sign up because it's required — and easier than chemistry, students confessed.

Shoaf isn't oblivious to this fact. He recognizes that many of his students don't love school. That's why he is eager to get them into the ecology lab, where he has seen dozens of students learn to engage with environmental issues.

"I tend to get more work out of those kinds of kids, just because it's not the same old stuff you get in class," he said. "It's outside, it's active."

Shoaf's ecology lab is a seven-acre hideaway, tucked into leftover space after the Shelbyville schools were built nearby.

About a decade ago, harmful invasive species crowded out the

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