‘Road Kill’ Joins 3 R’s as a Teaching Aid

For Pat Sullivan and his sixth-grade classmates at the Jordan Small School, the three R’s of education are “reading, ‘riting and road kill.”

The students can tell you how many skunks, cats and “unidentified road pizza” have been found on the roads of this southwestern Maine town. Along the way, they will also learn about computers.

The school is among 40 in New England, New York and Florida using computers to trade reports of highway mayhem in a project aimed at teaching the youngsters about the technology of exchanging information.

Gathering the raw data on flattened fauna is apparently not as gruesome as adults might imagine.

“It’s really not that gross,” said Sullivan. “When you’re traveling by at 30 miles per hour you really don’t see that much.”

The National Science Foundation-funded project was developed last year during a meeting of New England science teachers. Originally, it involved exchanging information about acid rain.

“The kids were kind of bored with that,” admitted Norm Hjort, Jordan Small’s science teacher. “The kids love this.”

The students use the school’s computer to send weekly reports to the Pinkerton Academy in Derry, N.H., where they are compiled by a teacher known as “Dr. Splat.” The kids also retrieve information submitted by other schools.

The reports tell a tale of woe for animals on roadways. “Bad week for cats,” reported Dory Mailer of Weaver High School in Hartford, Conn. Three felines had met untimely deaths in one week near her school.

Not all the roadside discoveries are easily identified, so the students have developed some abbreviations for describing the undistinguishable. “URP” stands for “unidentified road pizza.”

Occasionally the reports take on a more personal tone. Two Jordan Small students recently had to record the deaths of their own dogs, according to Hjort.

“They were sad but they reported them because they wanted them to be a part of it (the report),” said Meghan Regula, a student.

Hjort said the students’ data have been used in other areas of their science education. His class recently discussed why more gray squirrels were being killed than rabbits. Other students are writing a weekly “road kill update” for a Portland radio station.

Hjort and other teachers involved in the project hope to have the results of the students’ work published when it is completed at the end of the school year.