Prospective Teachers Take Plunge Into Wetter, Wilder View of Science

Sitting on the deck of the 45-foot boat, examining bloodworms in a petri dish, Ginger Machiele wondered aloud why her early science education was not more like this.

“I remember we weren’t allowed to bring bugs into science class,” said Machiele, 25, who is studying to become an elementary school teacher.

“In my class, we’re going to have an entire bug house,” she said exuberantly, above the whir of the engines of the D. J. Angus.

As part of Grand Valley State University’s Water Resources Institute, the Angus is used to collect data from Lake Michigan and nearby rivers, streams and inland lakes.

But its primary mission is as a floating laboratory and classroom, each year taking out hundreds of Grand Valley students and about 3,500 other guests, including teachers, elementary school students and senior citizens’ groups.

As part of a recently developed program, prospective elementary school teachers are getting a glimpse of how to make science more exciting.

“You’ve got to start making science exciting at the elementary level or you lose them early on,” said James Lubbers, an assistant professor of biology and science education at Grand Valley.

“When students--young and older--have a sense of ownership of the data, it has much more meaning to them than the textbook approach.”

Motivating future educators about teaching science has become a goal nationwide as the quality and quantity of science and math educators continue to dwindle. A shortage of scientists and engineers is expected during the next 15 years, the National Science Foundation says.

“Studies show that science and math education are poorly taught at the elementary level. The idea is to make those subjects more attractive to students so they’ll want to pursue them in college and then into a career,” said Thomas Benjamin, director of the Alliance for Environmental Education in Manassas, Va.

He said that other universities and nonprofit organizations offer such hands-on education for students and the public but that such programs aimed at motivating future teachers are too rare.

“There’s no reason that science can’t be fun,” Benjamin said. “Programs in which people can ask a question and literally find out their own answer can be just the stimulation someone needs to choose science as a career down the road.”

Lubbers’ Biology 107 class--Great Lakes and Water Resources--is part of the university’s project to improve science education. The project was created with a National Science Foundation grant.

Four of Lubbers’ 16 students aboard the Angus are majoring in elementary education. Other trips include Lake Michigan, water treatment plants and wetlands, where students investigate the effects of such contaminants as motor fuels from recreational vessels and pesticide runoff from lake-front homes.

As the college students examine water samples under microscopes in the galley-turned-laboratory, they find out that research can be more fascinating than textbook learning.

With that knowledge, they hope that they can make science come alive for their own students.

“When you learn this stuff from a textbook, a week after the test you don’t remember any of it,” said Steve DeRose, 23, a senior from East Lansing. “But being out here, collecting the samples, doing the tests--you retain what you learn.”

Of course, not every elementary school teacher has access to a boat, or even a large body of water.

“We hope a course like this will motivate them to develop their own techniques,” Lubbers said. “Almost every school is near a stream, where water samples can be taken . . . . Hopefully, it will just give them ideas to make science more exciting for their students than perhaps it was for them.”