This past summer I attended a Barcoding Educator workshop, an effort between James Madison University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), to train and expand DNA barcoding (the use of a single region of DNA to identify a species as simple as scanning a supermarket barcode) to other institutions across the nation. I chose to focus our DNA Barcoding Project at a location in our backyard, Arroyo Seco, an urban stream that flows into the L.A. River. The students were tasked to collect one insect with the use of a D-net, sweep net, or trapping them in a collection tube. We also set up a Malaise trap in the event a student was unable to collect a sample. In addition, students made observations using the iNaturalist application, an easy tool to create unique class specific projects (https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/eeb-87-california-s-dna-a-field-course). In groups students also collected water quality data and sediment environmental DNA samples. To our surprise, this hidden gem harbored high levels of biodiversity which included chorus frogs, salamanders, dragonflies, wolf spiders, and even horses!