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One by one, the eighth graders hop over the iron safety bar, and quickly descend the steep flight of steps until they are in the bottom of a giant hole. There, they grab small picks and shovels and get to work filling buckets with centuries-old dirt. The kids are excited about the ancient floor they’ve discovered.

“It is really fun,” Adam Sher, 13, tells The Media Line. “We all have to work together and it’s so cool that we found the floor.”

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“Be careful,” archaeologist Yoni Mizrach warns the students. “You don’t want to damage anything.”

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Mizrachi says the students have unearthed the floor of a Byzantine water cistern right next to The Experimental School in downtown Jerusalem, where they study.

“What they find is important, but it’s even more important that they explore the area that is right around their school,” he told The Media Line. “This is a different way of teaching history and archaeology. You study the past, not only in books.”