In the classroom!

Thursday and Friday were the first two days in the classroom at Helix High School. All in all, I think it went alright. Thursday involved a short presentation introducing myself and my research. One thing that really got the students interest was when I mentioned one of my favorite outdoor activities is backpacking. I got a wide range of questions about this from “what is backpacking?” to “do you carry a gun to protect yourself from animals?” (no, the only arms I carry are the two attached to my shoulders.) As some of you who follow me on Twitter know, I work in a pretty spectacular place and there were requests from the students that we take a field trip to the White Mountains. That would be great except for the fact we have no money (if any rich readers of this blog want to donate to a White Mountains field trip I’ll rename our new cat after you!!).

Anyway, Thursday was the first day of the ecology unit and I dedicated time to introducing what ecology is and what ecosystems are. We also talked about the six levels of ecological organization (individual to biosphere). This was an interactive activity that got students out of their chairs (individual student --> population of students --> community of organisms within the classroom --> ecosystem of biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) factors in the classroom --> biome of various science classrooms in the science building --> a biosphere of subject “biomes” at Helix High School) and seemed effective. Students were also given a homework assignment that examined plant communities within the White Mountains.

On Friday we spent some time going over the White Mountains plant communities homework assignment. During my last trip to the Whites I took videos of the different plant communities found across the gradient of elevation and used those as part of our review of the homework. These videos are the first I've ever posted on YouTube and can be seen below.

I hope that I have gotten off to a good start and looking forward to future visits to the classroom that will employ more hands-on learning.

Part 1: Desert scrub

Part 2: Pinyon juniper woodland

Part 3: Sub-alpine

Part 4: Alpine

Part 5: Nival

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!