Comments on Ocean Lecture & Educator’s Night

I just wanted to share how great the lecture was last night. There were three of us from Eisenhower School last night (Scott Pachuta, Carol Munn and myself) and we left feeling completely re-energized and motivated to implement what we learned.

First thing this morning was a reassurance of that feeling when Carol popped in my room before class. We began bouncing ideas of implementing the lesson “Black Sea Bass Encounter” and the cross-curricular opportunities. It was followed up with Mike (Griffin) and I meeting up in our Ocean Science room, where I filled him in on Dr. Jensen’s lecture and the potential collaboration.

The ever-pressing issue is continuing that “buzz” or motivation. How do we do this? What needs to be put in place? How do we sustain M.A.R.E.? I think last nights “experimental” lecture was a wonderful starting point. It makes sense to teach M.A.R.E. to educators the same way we would teach our students… small chunks of information. I have this moto I use in my Art class, “A little bit of information, a lot of application”.

To be able to process small amounts of information at a given time takes a lot of the intimidation our of teaching or implementing M.A.R.E. Last night was the perfect example. We talked about fisheries and the lesson was relevant to what we just learned, but that’s as far as it went, which allowed us to process and make sense of the information. We always have to remember that an abundance of our M.A.R.E. educators are not scientists and the language alone can be consuming and overwhelming.

I would like to see the M.A.R.E. educator nights happen bi-monthly. It would give us a month in between lectures to implement what we learned/ talked about and it would give us time to come back with “real” feedback.

I’m not sure if this is the place for what I just wrote, but I figured someone would read it. Thanks again for the opportunity.