11
DISCOVERING LIFE
The topic for one of my elective courses at Antioch that spring was vernal pools. In case you don’t know, a vernal pool is actually a big puddle in the middle of the woods caused by melting snow and spring rains. It dries up in the summer, but in the spring, it is virtually teeming with life. Without vernal pools, the entire ecological balance of the northern forest would be upset. The survival of many species depends on them.
So my Antioch class would often tramp out into the woods to look for vernal pools and observe the habitat. We would dig down into the mud and leaves to examine insect larvae. We would take samples of water to observe under a microscope. We would shriek with joy should we discover some evidence of salamander eggs or a live spring peeper. I know, it sounds a little geeky, but it really was exciting. And besides, it gave us an excuse to be outdoors for class.
This was a relatively new experience for me, working like a scientist in the field, and I was coming to the conclusion that most learning actually takes place outside of the classroom anyway, not inside it. The classroom’s role is more of a check-in, a place to share ideas or maybe commiserate. There could be no substitute for the hands-on learning that takes place when you actually experience it first-hand.
I wanted to find a way to share my excitement for this feeling of being actively involved in science with my students back at the ALT school, but I was definitely not yet brave enough to take my little cherubs out into the woods. My crew would be gone in a minute, off to find a safe place to smoke (or worse). They would trample a tranquil vernal pool in seconds and impact the local ecological balance for decades to come. I had to find a way to share this experience with them that was safe for the environment, safe for them, and safe for me.
In my basement was a large aquarium that had not been used for a few years. My wife had given it to me as a gift, and for several years I had kept a number of saltwater fish and invertebrates in it. I truly enjoyed the marine ecology and found it very relaxing to watch the fish and corals, to maintain the chemical balance of the water and listen to the gurgling of the water filter as it spilled clean saltwater into the tank. The fish were beautiful and also quite expensive. But that was during my heyday of corporate status where $50 or $100 for a fish was still considered disposable income. Eventually, some of the bigger fish ate the smaller fish, I grew tired of checking the pH levels, and a good deal of algae was covering the coral. When the last fish died, I decided to give the tank a break, stuck it in the basement, and forgot about it.
Now the tank held a new interest for me. If I couldn’t bring the kids to the vernal pool, then I would bring the vernal pool to them. Why not? I thought it was brilliant. I could manage their access to the tank and the wildlife it contained and they could still experience the wonder of science first-hand. All I needed to do was find a local pool and gather the water in containers, and viola! The ALT vernal pool would be open for business.
Between my own graduate classes, teaching, working, and being a dad, I was a pretty busy guy. So one night I asked my youngest son, (who was in high school at the time and no longer hated me) if he would accompany me into the woods to gather pond water so I could bring it to school the next day. I knew of a place in a nearby conservation area that had some promising vernal pools we could check out. It just so happened he did not have any plans with his friends that night and could squeeze me into his busy schedule, so he agreed to help out.
I can’t speak for every father, but it is often difficult for fathers and sons to share positive bonding experiences, especially when the son is a typical, active teenager. There seems to be some natural force pushing the two apart and friction can be generated by even the slightest interaction. It may be an instinctual process where the oldest male has to kick the male offspring out of the den, or it may be the young offspring’s need to express his independence, I don’t really know. What I do know is that I was always looking for ways to stay close to my son even as we struggled to understand each other.
So there we were one night carrying a bunch of empty milk jugs and plastic containers down a dark path into the woods. We could barely see where we were going even though there was supposed to be a full moon. I assured Jared that it should eventually get brighter when the moon rose high enough to cast some light. We were chatting and making a lot of noise as we walked, but neither of us would admit that we were trying to scare away anything that might be lurking in the bushes. The chirping of the tree frogs was both beautiful and haunting in the murkiness of the evening. It was one of those situations where your senses are heightened. We felt totally alive in the experience of the moment.
After a short but exhilarating hike, we arrived at the vernal pool. I took out a couple of small flashlights and we carefully worked our way around the edges looking for any signs of eggs or larvae or anything else of interest. We filled our containers with mud and water and leaves and sticks. We really couldn’t see what we were gathering but we figured it probably didn’t matter anyway.
We had to work hard lugging the heavy containers back down the trail to the car. We sweated, we tripped, we soaked ourselves, and we laughed. We still didn’t say anything about how scary the woods were at night. By the time we got back to the trailhead and the car, the moon still had not risen. We loaded what remained of the muddy water into the back of the car cursing the darkness. As we were driving home, the moon finally appeared as promised, huge and round and as bright as could be, a commitment finally kept.
All in all, it was a good night, one I will always cherish in my heart.
The next morning I emptied all the contents of the containers into the tank in my classroom filling it about three-quarters of the way. I placed an assortment of magnifying glasses, nets and collection jars around the tank, along with field guides to local insects, frogs and other creatures they might hopefully discover. I would give them all the tools of a scientist and see what they could come up with. I even prepared an “observation” sheet the students could fill out if they saw anything interesting and record their observations in either words or pictures.
When the kids came into class, I had all I could do to keep them from climbing into the tank. I patiently showed them how to pour small samples into containers and look for “stuff”. I had gathered some plastic trays in which they could spread out the mud and leaves to look for things, and I demonstrated how to do that. I showed them how to look in the field guides if they found anything so they could figure out what the specimen was.
I was in teacher heaven, moving about the room, monitoring all the kids and helping them, when suddenly I heard Teddie shouting from across the room.
“THERE’S LIFE, THERE’S LIFE! I DISCOVERED LIFE!” Teddie was screaming out at the top of his lungs. A bunch of kids gathered around him to see what it was he was screaming about. They were all pushing in to get a good look.
I instructed Teddie to draw what he saw on the observation sheet. He grabbed a pencil and started sketching furiously, but with great detail. I brought the field guide over to him and asked him to try to find a picture of his “life” in the field guide. Then I went back to helping some other students sort through some mud and leaves.
After a few minutes I heard Teddie yelling again.
“I FOUND IT! I FOUND IT!” he shouted. Again the crowd gathered around him.
“IT’S A MOSQUINTO! IT’S A MOSQUINTO!” declared Teddie.
“What’s a mosquinto?” asked one of the other kids.
“I don’t know,” said Teddie.
“It’s pronounced “mosquito” I said quietly.
“Wow!” said Teddie. “A real mosquito. A baby mosquito.” He proudly studied his find.
From the speechless crowd gathered around Teddie I heard someone say, “So. It’s still LIFE”.
“Yes, it is.” I agreed. “It certainly is.” Who would have ever thought I’d discover life in my first year of teaching?
DISCOVERING LIFE
The topic for one of my elective courses at Antioch that spring was vernal pools. In case you don’t know, a vernal pool is actually a big puddle in the middle of the woods caused by melting snow and spring rains. It dries up in the summer, but in the spring, it is virtually teeming with life. Without vernal pools, the entire ecological balance of the northern forest would be upset. The survival of many species depends on them.
So my Antioch class would often tramp out into the woods to look for vernal pools and observe the habitat. We would dig down into the mud and leaves to examine insect larvae. We would take samples of water to observe under a microscope. We would shriek with joy should we discover some evidence of salamander eggs or a live spring peeper. I know, it sounds a little geeky, but it really was exciting. And besides, it gave us an excuse to be outdoors for class.
This was a relatively new experience for me, working like a scientist in the field, and I was coming to the conclusion that most learning actually takes place outside of the classroom anyway, not inside it. The classroom’s role is more of a check-in, a place to share ideas or maybe commiserate. There could be no substitute for the hands-on learning that takes place when you actually experience it first-hand.
I wanted to find a way to share my excitement for this feeling of being actively involved in science with my students back at the ALT school, but I was definitely not yet brave enough to take my little cherubs out into the woods. My crew would be gone in a minute, off to find a safe place to smoke (or worse). They would trample a tranquil vernal pool in seconds and impact the local ecological balance for decades to come. I had to find a way to share this experience with them that was safe for the environment, safe for them, and safe for me.
In my basement was a large aquarium that had not been used for a few years. My wife had given it to me as a gift, and for several years I had kept a number of saltwater fish and invertebrates in it. I truly enjoyed the marine ecology and found it very relaxing to watch the fish and corals, to maintain the chemical balance of the water and listen to the gurgling of the water filter as it spilled clean saltwater into the tank. The fish were beautiful and also quite expensive. But that was during my heyday of corporate status where $50 or $100 for a fish was still considered disposable income. Eventually, some of the bigger fish ate the smaller fish, I grew tired of checking the pH levels, and a good deal of algae was covering the coral. When the last fish died, I decided to give the tank a break, stuck it in the basement, and forgot about it.
Now the tank held a new interest for me. If I couldn’t bring the kids to the vernal pool, then I would bring the vernal pool to them. Why not? I thought it was brilliant. I could manage their access to the tank and the wildlife it contained and they could still experience the wonder of science first-hand. All I needed to do was find a local pool and gather the water in containers, and viola! The ALT vernal pool would be open for business.
Between my own graduate classes, teaching, working, and being a dad, I was a pretty busy guy. So one night I asked my youngest son, (who was in high school at the time and no longer hated me) if he would accompany me into the woods to gather pond water so I could bring it to school the next day. I knew of a place in a nearby conservation area that had some promising vernal pools we could check out. It just so happened he did not have any plans with his friends that night and could squeeze me into his busy schedule, so he agreed to help out.
I can’t speak for every father, but it is often difficult for fathers and sons to share positive bonding experiences, especially when the son is a typical, active teenager. There seems to be some natural force pushing the two apart and friction can be generated by even the slightest interaction. It may be an instinctual process where the oldest male has to kick the male offspring out of the den, or it may be the young offspring’s need to express his independence, I don’t really know. What I do know is that I was always looking for ways to stay close to my son even as we struggled to understand each other.
So there we were one night carrying a bunch of empty milk jugs and plastic containers down a dark path into the woods. We could barely see where we were going even though there was supposed to be a full moon. I assured Jared that it should eventually get brighter when the moon rose high enough to cast some light. We were chatting and making a lot of noise as we walked, but neither of us would admit that we were trying to scare away anything that might be lurking in the bushes. The chirping of the tree frogs was both beautiful and haunting in the murkiness of the evening. It was one of those situations where your senses are heightened. We felt totally alive in the experience of the moment.
After a short but exhilarating hike, we arrived at the vernal pool. I took out a couple of small flashlights and we carefully worked our way around the edges looking for any signs of eggs or larvae or anything else of interest. We filled our containers with mud and water and leaves and sticks. We really couldn’t see what we were gathering but we figured it probably didn’t matter anyway.
We had to work hard lugging the heavy containers back down the trail to the car. We sweated, we tripped, we soaked ourselves, and we laughed. We still didn’t say anything about how scary the woods were at night. By the time we got back to the trailhead and the car, the moon still had not risen. We loaded what remained of the muddy water into the back of the car cursing the darkness. As we were driving home, the moon finally appeared as promised, huge and round and as bright as could be, a commitment finally kept.
All in all, it was a good night, one I will always cherish in my heart.
The next morning I emptied all the contents of the containers into the tank in my classroom filling it about three-quarters of the way. I placed an assortment of magnifying glasses, nets and collection jars around the tank, along with field guides to local insects, frogs and other creatures they might hopefully discover. I would give them all the tools of a scientist and see what they could come up with. I even prepared an “observation” sheet the students could fill out if they saw anything interesting and record their observations in either words or pictures.
When the kids came into class, I had all I could do to keep them from climbing into the tank. I patiently showed them how to pour small samples into containers and look for “stuff”. I had gathered some plastic trays in which they could spread out the mud and leaves to look for things, and I demonstrated how to do that. I showed them how to look in the field guides if they found anything so they could figure out what the specimen was.
I was in teacher heaven, moving about the room, monitoring all the kids and helping them, when suddenly I heard Teddie shouting from across the room.
“THERE’S LIFE, THERE’S LIFE! I DISCOVERED LIFE!” Teddie was screaming out at the top of his lungs. A bunch of kids gathered around him to see what it was he was screaming about. They were all pushing in to get a good look.
I instructed Teddie to draw what he saw on the observation sheet. He grabbed a pencil and started sketching furiously, but with great detail. I brought the field guide over to him and asked him to try to find a picture of his “life” in the field guide. Then I went back to helping some other students sort through some mud and leaves.
After a few minutes I heard Teddie yelling again.
“I FOUND IT! I FOUND IT!” he shouted. Again the crowd gathered around him.
“IT’S A MOSQUINTO! IT’S A MOSQUINTO!” declared Teddie.
“What’s a mosquinto?” asked one of the other kids.
“I don’t know,” said Teddie.
“It’s pronounced “mosquito” I said quietly.
“Wow!” said Teddie. “A real mosquito. A baby mosquito.” He proudly studied his find.
From the speechless crowd gathered around Teddie I heard someone say, “So. It’s still LIFE”.
“Yes, it is.” I agreed. “It certainly is.” Who would have ever thought I’d discover life in my first year of teaching?
