YOUNGSTOWN, N.Y. (WKBW) — While school's out, science teachers, from all over the Great Lakes region, are gearing up for a day full of learning.
A number of teachers, like Ellen Harp, a technology teacher at French Road Elementary in Rochester, are embarking on a two-day Center for Great Lakes Literacy Great Lakes Plankton Workshop
"I'm improving my skills at identifying zooplankton and phytoplankton and learning about microplastics," Harp said. "I tried teaching about algae in the food web and I found that I didn't really know enough about the microscopic level of what was happening. And so I think climate change is affecting many different species and I'd like to learn more about how to explain that to young children."
Big Picture Learning science teacher, Jennifer Crane, said this immersive experience can be applied to lesson plans for her students.
"I just love the experiences that the sea grant gives us just so that we can really see what is happening in our area and how we can help improve and help that future generation," Crane said. "A lot of my students are avid fishermen and so it brings this information that we learned today really shows them well, what's healthy? What's helping those fish grow? What can we do to improve our waterways?"
The group left downtown Buffalo Thursday morning and made their way to Joseph Davis State Park in Youngstown to sample for plankton and microplastics.
They also examined this all under the microscope.
Todd Fiore, a biology teacher with Cattaraugus Little Valley, said this is his first workshop. He said he is taking advantage of what's right in our backyard.
"We live next to what is arguably 1/5th of the world's freshwater is in our backyard. That is amazing! What an incredible resource that we have," Fiore said. "Science is all about, you know, understanding and studying the stuff that's too big and too small to really understand. That's part of the reason why you become a scientist or a science teacher."
Nate Drag, Great Lakes Literacy Specialist for New York Sea Grant, guided the teachers through each station as they learned and examined microplastics and plankton, which is at the base of the food chain.
"There's no place really on Earth that has this much fresh water, and it's right here. We take it for granted a lot," Drag said. "So the main focus is plankton and what's living out there. But while we're looking at things on our microscopes, while we're using nets, we're also gonna see what type of microplastics fibers things are in there as far as the small plastics on the shore. Because these small organisms can ingest that small pollution and it can work its way up the food chain."
The hands-on experience is now another tool in these teachers' toolboxes.
"So this is going to allow us to really bring the latest and the greatest in science, innovation, and the complications that are that are currently happening in order to use that in our curriculum planning lessons," Fiore said.
