Teachers, in student mode, bone up on science at WSU

Geologist Kirsten Peters identifies rocks for teachers on a field trip into the
Snake River Canyon. Photos courtesy Julie Titone.
 
 
 
PULLMAN — On last summer’s visit to Washington State University, Craig Potter saw something he’s bound to mention when he teaches his Deer Park, Wash., fourth-graders about the human body.

“We saw a cadaver,” Potter said, recalling the first Math Science Partnership institute that he attended.. “He was 55, about 6-foot-8, and was wrapped in a sheet. He looked like a mummy.”

Teachers from throughout Eastern Washington are once again on the receiving end of many teachable moments during the second set of Math Science Partnership summer institutes at WSU.  Two identical four-day institutes (June 22-25 and June 29-July 2) are part of an effort to prepare teachers for the state’s new science standards, which will dictate what their students should learn. 

“Last year, the focus was on life sciences. This year, it’s on earth/space science,” said Lynda Paznokas, a retired WSU associate professor of education who helped organize the institutes. “The third traditional area of science education is physical science.”
 
The Spokane-based Educational Service District 101 applied for the $750,000 federal grant that has paid for science institutes at both WSU and Eastern Washington University for the last two years.
 
A total of 43 elementary and middle school teachers are participating in the institutes at WSU. Faculty members who lectured were Kathy Baldwin, Lisa Carloye, Ann Kennedy and Kirsten Peters, on geology; Shelley Pressley and Kara Yedinak, on air and weather;  Kirk Reinkens, on solar energy; Guy Worthey and (from the University of Idaho) Paul Allan, on space; Lynda Paznokas, on dinosaurs and fossils; and Skip Paznokas, on water. Alice Boerner, a Hoquaim school teacher and WSU Vancouver instructor, explained the use of notebooking as a teaching method.

The institutes include visits to Pullman’s Palouse Discovery Science Center and to WSU’s Jewett Observatory and Planetarium.  And, with sun hats and clipboards in hand, participants head out to the Snake River Canyon for a geology tour led by Peters, who is both a geologist and writer with a syndicated column called “Rock Doc.”

Last Wednesday, with the canyon walls looming above, Peters asked the teachers to count terraces that indicate ancient lava flows. She showed them a quarry wall composed of Bonneville Flood gravel topped with layers of sediment from the Great Missoula Flood, which is a rare glimpse of two mighty earth-moving forces converging. She talked about the “scary” speed of climate change, and about the differences between basalt and granite.
 
The lessons were valuable, said Tina Mueller, an Oakesdale teacher. She doesn’t teach earth science to her first-graders, but they are likely to bring her a rock and ask what it is.  “I can see pairing up with the fifth grade and sharing a geology lesson,” she said.

Mueller also enjoyed learning for her own sake. “When I went through college, I wasn’t that interested in geology.”

The teachers listened attentively and asked lots of questions, although not, Peters noted, the one she has heard from many college-age students:  “Is that going to be on the test?”

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