Monday, June 13, 2005

Retirement

Last Saturday, my wife, Carol and I crashed a party. Mind you, this is not something we normally would do but I just had to see the surprise retirement party for John Wachholz put on by his wife and his former students. We weren’t invited because we were not former students--but we are—everyone who knows John has learned from John. You see, John has taught biology for 43 years with passion and courage and I know of no other teacher who continually receives “thank-you for changing my life” letters from former students. John and I have shared many phone calls—often weekly—where we discussed the challenges of teaching biology. John’s dedication to doing the right thing and passion for teaching have always been an inspiration to me.

We crashed the party because we wanted to meet some of his students who I had heard so much about. In fact, in was one of his former students that let me know about the get-together. The party was a perfect fit. We assembled at the Land Institute in the barn and John was caught totally unaware as he was escorted to the “Land” by his step-daughter, Linda, and family. As normal, John’s own passion and caring for his students meant that any attempt on his part to convey his appreciation had to be interpreted through his tears of joy and his breaking voice. John is not afraid to wear his emotions on his sleeve. His former students proceeded to give short talks about what John had meant to them. Inspirational. You might expect that at least the biologists (there were at least three with biology PhD’s) would have talked mostly about the biology they learned. Au contraire—mostly his students talked about John being an inspiration, about how he got them to think and how he made them realize how important they were. The most used phrase that I heard all night was some form of, “I see the world through his eyes.” or “I hear his voice in my head.” You see, John, has always challenged students, colleagues and friends to think about their impact on this planet, their role in society and to be productive as an individual.

I’ve often said that no profession (other than health care) probably has as much emotional up and down as teaching does. Even a great teacher like John can find themselves questioning what they are doing and their own abilities in the face of the different challenges that face an educator each and every day. You can have five great classes in a row and be feeling like you’ve really had an impact only to have the entire day’s accomplishment spin out of control during last hour as you encounter one recalcitrant, uninvolved student that you can’t seem to reach. For John, these moments always weighed heavily. It’s probably a character of outstanding teachers. The evening had to be an incredible validation for John. John’s wife, Bette Sue, talked of courage. It truly does take courage to be a teacher like John.

John’s generation is retiring. Just this year in Kansas, John, Ernie Brown and Pat Wakeman are retiring. In recent years, Stan Roth, Harry McDonald and Terry Callendar retired. This generation has been very active in professional societies. All of the previously mentioned folks have served as KABT, the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers, president or as board members. Stan was for president for NABT. I'm sure I'm forgetting some and I apologize.

John was a member of the board of KABT, president, newsletter editor and treasurer for much of the last 25 years of his career. Over the years, John hosted a number of workshops and meetings at his school to share with other teachers—particularly new teachers.

The biology teachers of John’s generation were the product of the federal government efforts to infuse science education with real science during the ‘60s and 70’s. Many biology these were able to attend numerous NSF sponsored summer workshops where they learned biology content, how to do biology, and how to teach biology. A survey of Presidential award winners indicated that the two things that most of the awardees attributed to their individual success were NSF workshops and professional science teacher organizations like NABT. John fits that description as well. I’m really concerned that we are turning away from these time tested and proven methods of biology teacher professional development—particularly the summer workshops. Of course there are other sources of summer workshops and I encourage biology teachers to take advantage of them. The best place to learn about these opportunities or to even create such opportunities for biology teachers is as a member of a professional science teachers organiztion. John would certainly concur. New and old biology teachers, please, join your local and national professional organizations. I guarantee that you and your teaching will benefit--and so will the biology teaching community.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

KABT Ashfall Field Trip

Blog Revival:

I can’t really believe how long it has been since we last posted to this blog. I knew that as biology teachers trying to maintain a blog would be difficult so I thought I’d share the load—still too big of job while class is in session. However, it is summer and I’m on a leave of absence so I’ll try to revive this blog….

Kansas Association of Biology Teacher Spring Field Trip Report:

Each spring for the past 4 decades the KABT has led field trips to sites of interest throughout Kansas. Once in a while we also venture to adjoining states. This year the board elected to go to Ashfall State Park in Nebraska. The itinerary and links can be found at: http://kabt.org/F_Trips/KABT_Spring_Field_Trip_2005.htm

Field trip members included: Sandy Collins, Paula Donham, Carol Williamson, Josie Stiles, Shari McDougal, Eric Kessler and family (Christin, Mara, Rebecca, and Owen) and myself, Brad Williamson. It’s a long road trip to Ashfall. This, along with the weather forecast doubtlessly limited our attendance.

We all took our own routes and met at the Nebraska State Museum on the Lincoln campus at about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. This museum is really a gem.

Nebraska is one of the best locations in the world for studying the Cenozoic and mammal evolution. I organized this trip based on the premise that mammal fossil history has great untapped, educational potential.
While dinosaurs and dinosaur evolution serve to really motivate students it seems to me that many of my students regard dinosaurs as almost fictional characters. This is not as big of a problem with mammal fossils—everybody connects to “warm, fuzzies.”

We spent a couple of hours touring the fossil exhibits. The museum has a great display of mammoth and mastodon fossils.

We were amazed at the diversity of elephants found in Nebraska. A bonus was a new exhibit of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers and Eskimo Curlews as well as Joel Sartore’s Photograph exhibit—extraordinary. The museum displays helped us to get our arms around the diversity of extinct animals that once populated the Nebraska plains and helped us build a time framework to begin understanding the fossil history of mammals.

After a quick lunch we drove on to Niobrara State Park. This park is at the confluence of the Niobrara River and the Missouri Rivers. It was one of the sites described in Lewis and Clark’s Journal. The panorama is spectacular. We timed our arrival to take advantage of their Saturday night Bison Burger cook out. The park personnel invite park goers to a BBQ and program each Saturday night. The food was great and the program was interesting. A local mountain man enthusiast shared his view of the history of the area and his mountain man gear.

Earlier, I mentioned that the weather forecast may have contributed to low attendance. The forecast called for strong to severe thunderstorms with possible tornados. Most of the tornado activity was forecast for much further south. One of the advantages of the wide open plains is that you get to watch storms develop in late afternoon. While we were eating at the BBS the thunderheads were building off to our south. By the time we were done we thought we’d best be getting our campsites ready for the impending storm. We dodged the first storm...

But later, just after sundown, one of the park rangers came by and informed us of an approaching storm, 20 minutes away, with high winds and hail. He strongly suggested we take shelter in the bathhouse in the RV campground. We all loaded up in our cars to get to the bathhouse but it was actually almost 2 miles away—the storm hit before we made shelter. Blinding rain, golf ball sized hail and 60+ mph winds made for a very hazardous situation. We could not see the roads to drive on and to make matters worse we were on steep hills. Luckily we all eventually made shelter or lasted through the storm in our vehicles. After the storm, Josie (a second-year teacher) accused me of creating a stressful situation just to facilitate the transfer all they’d learned into long-term memory. (If it works I’ll have to try it again, sometime….) We returned to our tents about 12:30—the tents were all standing and we slept well.

After drying out, showering and breakfast at a local café, we loaded up and headed to Ashfall. I had prearranged for a guided program but had not counted on the program being led by Michael Voorhies, himself.


Mike is the guy who discovered Ashfall. His enthusiasm for paleontology and science is truly contagious. The uniqueness of Ashfall is that the dozens of specimens are largely complete and articulated—a very rare occurrence. Mike’s inspiration to complete an on-site museum with the specimens in situ and not transferred to a museum display was brilliant.



The impact on learning is immense and especially for biology teachers. We all left with books, ideas and inspiration for how to supplement our evolution units and most of all we all wanted to volunteer to help with future digs at Ashfall.

While an old standby I think that a revisiting of the evolution of horses would have a number of advantages for evolution education. Several of the teachers were very impressed with a simple display of the lower legs of the 5 species of horse found at Ashfall compared to the modern horse.


Here is a reference to a PBS site that might provide a beginning. http://www.pbs.org/wildhorses/wh_origin/wh_origin_intro.html and another from Kathleen Hunt: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

I think that a good measure of the quality of a place is the books for sale in the gift shop. In my opinion the books for sale at this little gift shop speak volumes about the folks that run it. I said as much to Rick Otto, park superintendent, and he expressed his appreciation and indicated that he had selected books to be informative and educational along the themes of Ashfall.

Ashfall is truly remote from the general flow of travelers across our country but by all means try and find time sometime to make it to the excellent resource—you won’t be sorry.

Challenge: To the KABT members attending this field trip enter your impressions of the trip by posting a comment to this post—just click on “Post a Comment”