DEERFIELD — A middle school science teacher will be exchanging lesson plans and classroom exercises to try out her sea legs for two weeks starting today.

Ellen O'Donnell teaches seventh and eighth grade at Deerfield Community School and was selected to be a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Teacher at Sea Program. The 12-day research mission is geared toward the study of North Atlantic right whales.

O'Donnell said about 270 teachers applied. The field was narrowed to 25 teachers who were chosen to join the mission. She said that as thrilling as it will be to study the whales up close, she is most excited about bringing her experiences and newly gained knowledge back to the classroom.

“It's a great experience because you're bringing back to the kids what it's like to do real science,” O'Donnell said. “Sometimes in classrooms we tend to do science for the sake of science and aren't linking it to the real world.”

O'Donnell will board the Delaware II from Woods Hole on Cape Cod on Monday and from there, the whales will dictate where the boat goes. O'Donnell said the boat could go as far as 100 miles off the coast and may even end up in Canadian waters.

While she is away, O'Donnell's students will be working with her sister's students in Connecticut to create an online project about the research mission. O'Donnell said her sister, also a middle school science teacher, participated in the program two years ago in Alaska.

Though she would have liked to travel farther, O'Donnell said she is excited to learn more about the local oceanography. She said by studying the whales and waters that are so deeply connected to New England, her students will have a better understanding of their local surroundings.

“All the things we are researching are local,” she said. “It's the Atlantic Ocean. It's right there. We should know more about it.”

When she returns, O'Donnell and the entire eighth grade class has a scheduled field trip to participate in a whale watch in Gloucester, Mass. O'Donnell said that after she and her students broaden their knowledge of whales through her research, they will have a better basis of understanding for when they go on the whale watch.

“When they're out there on the boat they will already know a lot if things, which always makes it more interesting,” she said.

While she's at sea, O'Donnell said she hopes she will be able to go out in one of the smaller boats that actually approach the whales to obtain samples for biopsies. She said researchers obtain genetic information from the whales and because she teaches genetics, O'Donnell said learning more about that aspect of whales could make for interesting lessons for her classroom.

But most exciting of all is that while she is on the boat, O'Donnell will be a working member of the crew and be able to experience what it is like to be a scientist out at sea. As she is working on the boat, O'Donnell will be blogging about her experiences at http://teacheratsea.wordpress.com/.

“I won't just be a teacher watching,” O'Donnell said. “I'll be an active member of the crew.”