When BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in 2010, over 200 million gallons of oil were dumped into the Gulf of Mexico. This was a tragic environmental disaster. Being a NOAA Teacher at Sea during the spill provided me the opportunity to have a firsthand view of this disaster and bring that experience back to my elementary students. The NOAA Teacher at Sea Program is one of the best opportunities to provide an avenue for teachers and students to interact with scientists and researchers and participate in real world field experiences. It also gave me the background to address student misunderstandings they had about marine life and gave me hands-on experiences to pass on to my students. It was one of the best professional development opportunities of my life, andit is imperative that teachers be provided with real-world research experiences. It is the only way for teachers to be able to create activities where they can make connections between science in the classroom and their students’ lives. My fourth, fifth and sixth graders experienced real-world science, and after studying the oil spill and simulating testing fish for oil contamination, they made their own recommendations to close or keep open three different locations within the Gulf. Then they actually sent their reports to NOAA. This was REAL science!
Programs like NOAA Teacher at Sea are critical because they allow the research community to collaboratively work with educators. Educators get a solid foundation and sense of expertise that is vital to the teaching of science. And with this passion, teachers can inspire the next generation to pursue scientific careers.
In my classroom we simulated using booms to collect the oil, using dispersants to make the oil easier to collect, created an oil plume to study the oil that was left after the cleanup efforts ended, and we SAW microbes eating oil. Students learned and experienced for themselves how a marine biologist takes data from the fish they catch aboard a research vessel and why this data is so important. Then we simulated being “sniffers” at the National Seafood Inspection Lab and actually “tested” real fish to see if they were contaminated or not. In my robotics class, we learned about various scientific careers: marine biologists, cartographers, oceanographers, ichthyologists, navigators, and environmental engineers.
Without my experience as a NOAA Teacher at Sea, none of this would have been taught to my students.
