For school age children on the island of Puerto Rico, the back-to-back hurricane strikes of Irma and Maria were their first experience with the tragedy of hurricanes in Puerto Rico. There is much concern in the general public about the ability of the Puerto Rican forests, like El Yunque, to recover. These concerns reveal common misconceptions about the dynamics of forest ecosystems. The focus of this research is Journey to El Yunque, a middle school curriculum unit that engages students in evidence-based modeling of hurricane disturbance using long-term data about population dynamics after Hurricane Hugo. Research was guided by the following research question: How does engagement in the science of disturbance ecology impact students’ understanding of and appreciation for ecosystems dynamics? Students completed pre and post assessment understanding of ecosystems dynamics and rated the teacher implementation using the Inquiry-Based Science Teaching survey. Based on a paired t-test, students statistically increased their performance from pretest to posttest with an effect size of 0.22. At the teacher level, the Inquiry-Based Instruction score was a statistically significant predictor of the posttest performance. In other words, these results provide evidence that engaging students in the practices of ecology predicted increased understanding of population dynamics.