Why?

Why Thailand?  Why elephants?  Why Fund for Teachers?

Well boy have we thought about this.  You see, in order to get the grant, we had to do a lot of introspective work about our teaching philosophies, goals, and weakness.  We also go to do something that teachers rarely get to do...dream big.  Dream like we could spend $10,000 on educational enrichment for teachers.  After dreaming, came the searching, which led to more dreaming.  The search was on!

We started by thinking about what we are doing really well as a science department, and then looked at which units we wished were a whole lot better, engaging and relevant.  This lead us strait to our ecology unit.  We go into a tremendous amount of detail about the cell, genetics, and the human body.  Once we get to the big picture, it always feels like we are in the mad-dash-cramming mode of spring and thus our plants, animals and ecology unit suffers.

So, ecology enrichment is where we started our search for the ultimate experience that would help us see the reality of 21st century ecology work in progress.  The search led us, eventually, to the programs offered by Earthwatch Expeditions.  But more about that on the next post.

The first part of the application asked:

Directions:  When thinking about your teaching practice, what would you like to learn?  What are the key questions or learning goals you want to explore?  What challenges or passion inspires your proposed fellowship? What grades and subject areas do you teach? 

This is what we had to say about that:  

Science is a fascinating discipline that allows those who are willing to ask questions of the unknown, the opportunity to discover new ideas, define a new way of thinking about the world around them, and inevitably the opportunity to ask more questions.  Sadly, science instruction for secondary students quite frequently becomes a class demonstration of the history of science discovery, giving the impression that what needs to be learned has already been figured out.  As a result, many students find themselves disenchanted with a subject that should be about discovery.  Instead, the study of science becomes riddled with huge vocabulary list and intricate processes to be described and memorized. Often, the art of science is lost.

Our goal as a 7^th grade Life Science department is to consistently be conscious of the need to relate the history of what has been learned through science to the complex questions that scientist are striving to answer through the use of facts, exploration and imagination.  In order to provide our students with a clear picture of how they can use their knowledge and skills gained in our 7^th grade life science classes, we need up-to-date real world experience working with field researchers.

 

When looking closely at our course of study, evaluations of our classes from our students, standardized testing, and the ability for students to apply information from previous units, we have found that our population struggles with tying the principles of genetics to natural selection, species variation and how plants and animals interact within the larger ecosystem.  While we strive to guide our students through the intricate details of inherited and learned traits through genetics, having the first-hand experience of working with endangered elephants in Thailand will give us, as teachers, the opportunity to teach our ecology unit through an exploratory case study model emphasizing the skill and art of science. 

Through participating in field research in an Earthwatch “Thinking Like an Elephant” expedition, we hope to broaden our teaching experience by studying the following: 

·         How do modern day large mammal researchers are studying natural selection and species variation?

·         What types of scientific data impacts policy decisions to protect endangered species and their habitats?

·         What are the current science professional expectations for data collection, reporting, and use of scientific data collection tools?

Ultimately, our goal is to expose our students to a variety of possibilities in applying the knowledge they learn in class, as well as creating an environment that fosters imagination, inquiry and exploration. We will do this by looking at a specific case study, the elephants of Thailand, to inspire our students to delve into an ecology topic that interests them.