The blog is back!!

Looking at my past blog posts reveals that it’s been… A LONG TIME… since I last posted anything. This is unacceptable! Someone really needs to get after me about not keeping up with that thing!

Anyway, I think it’s time to start updating the blog on a regular basis and today seems like a good day to re-initiate. Tomorrow will be my first day in the classroom for my NSF GK-12 fellowship. As part of this year’s experience I’m going to try and write a short summary of what I I’m doing in the classroom and comment a little about what went well and what didn’t. This is mostly for me to keep track of what I’ve been doing, but also to inform my immense fan base (mom? mom?) of what I’m doing. If anyone reading this has comments or suggestions as things progress, don’t hesitate to share them.

I’ll be in a biology classroom once or twice a week at Helix Charter High School in La Mesa, CA, a suburb of San Diego and will be focusing on ecology and the impacts of anthropogenic (human-induced) pressures on local and regional ecosystems. The over-arching project that students will carry out will be a competition experiment employing native coastal sage scrub plant species and invasive annual grasses. I’m looking forward to getting started!