Jen here –
Part of my new job is as a postdoctoral associate at a newly developed institute: Thompson Institute for Earth Systems. This institute has a primary goal of helping translate the complex science done at the University of Florida as it relates to Floridians. This includes anything related to the environment and the primary Earth systems (life, land, water, air). Recently, the institute was awarded a large grant to pursue a project to get scientists into Florida classrooms. To help promote and share content we hosted a workshop at the annual Florida Association of Science Teachers (FAST).
My supervisor had submitted the proposal for this workshop but was also giving a lecture the day before on the larger project and suggested I run the workshop instead. The idea was to give a brief but useful content overview to the educators and then allow time for lesson plan development and questions. This was a surprisingly daunting task: I’m used to giving quick research talks on a very specific topic and here I was tasked with describing how global processes can affect Floridians.
It took me an incredibly long amount of time to decide how I wanted to structure the talk. A colleague had suggested we play BINGO during the talk. I made BINGO cards for the teachers with terms that I would use during the content portion of the workshop. If someone got BINGO they would have to share the terms and describe how they are interconnected. One of the key points of the workshop was to exhibit how interconnected all of the spheres really are. The talk began with a direct issue here in Florida – sea level rise. NOAA has a sea level rise viewer where you can simulate what happens in a specific area when sea level rises. So I zoomed in to the area directly around where the conference was in Miami, Florida. The simulator starts at 0 and goes up to 6 feet, and unfortunately the average elevation in Florida is only just above 6 feet. I then walked the educators through the four basic spheres of Earth system and how we can visualize them here in Florida. This included how sea level rises, ocean circulation, erosion and weathering, cave and sinkhole (karst) features, greenhouse gases, and more!
The next portion of the workshop was designated to allow the teachers time to brainstorm ideas for a lesson or activity and to ask questions to content experts (the rest of our lab group and team was there in the room). There were some really great activities thought out and we were able to discuss ideas with the teachers for how we can better serve them as an academic institute. Overall, it was a great experience for me to share more information about Earth’s natural systems and foster discussions with educators.