Professional Development Opportunities ... 4
Name - Karen Alderson (Kay)
Directions...
Describe your professional development opportunities. You should include the location of each activity and expected timetable for completion.
You should demonstrate in narrative form how the proposed opportunities are connected to your classroom or School Project Plan, how they will improve the plan and your teaching performance.
The Culver City Middle School (CCMS) 7th grade science department has had the good fortune to have recognition through L.A. Times writer, Ted Shaffrey. His first article about us was about our Campus Butterfly garden. The second recognition was in the April 6, 2001: Cetecean Teachers: L.A. Dolphin Project turns Santa Monica into a Floating Classroom for Westside Students.
Ted Shaffrey and I have stayed in contact since that article and presently have started the background work necessary for his next article featuring our involvement with the Least Tern project and the new project with Oxnard District Frank Intermediate School and Jan Wasserman's Saticoy Tree Swallow Nest Boxing Inc. project. This article is planned for May publication so as to include the banding stage for the Tree Swallows.
I will continue being active on the board of the Ballona Lagoon Marine Preserve and the Friends of the Ballona Wetlands as "the Ballonas" is the location for most of my students service learning. I will expand the educational service learning component of these organizations as I plan stage I of the Ballona Tree Swallow Nest Boxing (BTSN) project and Mexican Free-Tailed Bat projects.
During the summer of 2002, 1 will act as an assistant to Marine Biology and Biology Field Testing professors Ed Tarvyd and Wait Sakai at Santa Monica College (SMCC) as we plan the Culver City Middle School (CCMS) and SMCC joint Ballona Field Curricula.
I will continue to accompany Ed Tarvyd when he takes his Marine Biology classes out on the field, especially on the floating lab (Van Tuna) in order to better lead my students on similar field trips (oceanography with an emphasis on water testing.). One of my former students, a student at Culver City High School, who has an aptitude in Marine Biology and a need to earn his community service hours, will accompany me on the Van Tuna in an effort to gain a better understanding of water testing curriculum appropriate for our 7th graders. My former student will facilitate lead-up lessons on this in the after school environmental club as we prepare for the Santa Monica Bay Keepers water testing unit with my seventh graders. A large portion of this outdoor lab curriculum has, of this date, been modified to the seventh grade level.
Because our staff, students and community have completed our campus native flower garden, we will now focus on our newest program, La Ballona Creek Renaissance (LBCR) which is in it's third and final year connecting my school to the community by way of an extension of the campus butterfly garden and a pedestrian bridge. I have established communication with a similar community/school program at Lakeside, Arizona: Big Springs Nature Center. This completed educational project is the result a collaborative effort between Blue Ridge Junior High School and Lakeside Lion's Club. Winter break 2001-2002 1 set up a committee of the science teacher at Blue Ridge, one of her students and the Lions Club President who are willing to meet with the President of the LBCR, a student representative and myself June 21, 2002 weekend for a workshop. The workshop will be held at my Lakeside cabin which is located 200 meters from the Arizona Big Springs Nature Center.
Following this I will fly to Minnesota to meet with the board of the National Youth Leadership Council to discuss with them our plans for multimedia presentation of our and Frank Intermediate schools' service learning in the areas of:
We are hoping the board will want us to present at their summer 2004 conferences.
A conference in Concord California is being planned for early September to visit schools who have a program similar to La Ballona Creek Renaissance (with an emphasis in service learning) for the same committee as attended the Big Springs conference.
Because of my involvement with Santa Monica City College, I have established some interest in students enrolled in Theater Arts working with Culver Middle students in the production of "Charles Darwin: Alive and In Concert" piece. The college students coaching Culver Middle students will use this experience as their semester project.
In the fall of 2002 1 will attend Loyola Marymount University (LMU) independent studies department to "Brainstorm" the idea of cross-age, cross-school, cross curricular units.
As my Assistant Principal (Emelio Pack) is a graduate of LMU, he will act as a conduit as we ask for a student teacher to once again do his/her student teaching with myself and Ms. Bartlebaugh. September, 2002, 1 will enroll in "Theater Arts" workshop at LMU to help as we fine tune the "Charles Darwin: Live and in Concert" piece.
September, October and November are the best months for on the water Dolphin studies so my 7th graders will "Partner" with students from Frank Intermediate for a total of of nine fall outtings. A week-end parent/ teacher training workshop will precede the trips during the 2002 and 2003 summers.
I will continue my involvement with Walt Sakai at S.M.C.C. helping his students band birds, bringing some of my students and their parents ( to-be docents, hopefully!) with me to learn this important field research. December, 2002 Ms. Bartlebaugh and myself have been accepted to present S.E.P.R.E at the National Science Teachers Convention in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Frank Intermediate is planning on helping with this. In late December 2002 and/ or early January in the year 2003 1 (and hopefully, my entire team) will enroll in SMCC Ed. Tarvyd's Biology 46 "Charles Darwin Field Trip" where we will travel to London and city environs. Both schools' students will be taking the trip "through cyberspace" as we travel to the places the father of evolution did his most important work.
March 2003 a trip is planned to Gibbon, Nebraska at the Platt River where I will participate in a Sandhill Crane and wildlife sanctuary field workshop to share our bird and bat projects with participants at the site. At the start of spring break in the year 2003 1 will Join Ms. Susan Dandy ( Frank Intermediate science teacher) and Ms. Elaine Daughterty (Frank Intermediate Vice Principal) in a week-end trip to the Channel Islands where they have an ongoing program with National Geographic that deals with conservation and Service Learning. Following this, we will travel to Grassy Key, Florida to research and collect data on sharks, whales, the migrating Bottle Neck Dolphins, and, the Least Terns to compare this data to the data collected by our Californians.
Maddalena Beritz of the Dolphin Project and Kathy Keane of the Least Tern Project will be on the ready to receive information live via the internet.
While in Florida, we will visit our "sister schools", Neptune Middle School in Kissimmee and Gulf Middle School in Naples whose students have been doing similar projects to S.E.P.R.E. and whose teachers have been doing docent training similar to ours at Culver Middle and Frank Intermediate.
We have already done statistical comparisons with Neptune and Gulf M.S. "on the net" with flaura/fauna i.d. and count and water testing so our students will be interested in documentations and recordings from this trip. We will also visit the Archbold Research Station where Professor Torgrim from Stavanger University has had a years sabbatical as a visiting Zoologist with a focus on the endangered Florida Scrub Jay. Because of Archbold's vigorous education program, I plan on incorporating many of their lessons for use in my district's outdoor science classroom curriculum at the Ballona Wetlands and Lagoon.
Upon our return from Florida we will prepare for student representation at the annual Apr] 122 Ballona Festival. It is here that students from Culver Middle and Frank Intermediate in both science and language arts Will have a chance to earn service learning credit while showing the community their newly constructed bat houses &swallow houses. This will be accomplished in a "Jr. Docent Nature Walk". While the scientists are leading a tour, language arts performers will be giving oral presentations with a focus on the Coastal Native Americans. Former Culver Middle School teacher, John Healy, will be taping this for use on public television. We will purchase a copy of this tape for our use as well.
June 26-July 2003 1 will travel to Stavanger, Norway to meet with professor Torgrim and his associates. He and his wife have scheduled workshops for me in Stavanger, Oslo and Bergen focusing on double brooding bird species similar to our the Saticoy Tree Swallows. I am expected to bring my laptop to give a powerpoint presentation on S.E.P.R.E.'s progress. Early August, 2003 will find Frank Intermediate science person and me meeting with Mr. Winkler at Cornell ornithology research station to compare our data on the Tree Swallow project with his (Golodrinas de las Americas). I will travel from there to Martha's Vineyard for a workshop on the endangered Plover and Least Tern. It will be useful to compare the Least Tern data my middleschoolers have to that from this site.
Fall, 2003, I will take an independent study course at Loyola Marymount in order to present our S.E.P.R.E. Project to other schools and plan extensions that will assure its continuation in our District Science Handbook. Fall 2003, will afford me the chance to work co-operately with Roundhouse Aquarium in Manhattan Beach to further the S.E.P.R.E. concept and to "fine- tune" our cross-age Jr. Docent program to include 5th grade at our grade schools and the biology students at Culver High.
During the winter break of 2003-4 I will meet with Arizona Game and Fish bat specialist to share S.E.P.R.E.'s progress Mexican Free-Tailed Bat project and to brainstorm where we go from here.
Early 2004 will be the second year of Charles Darwin: Live and in Concert Project. We plan to, once again, enlighten the Oxnard and Culver City communities with this "evolve&' performance!
Spring vacation 2004 will I I find Jan Wasserman (Tree Swallow expert), Sandy Relth -- Az. Game and Fish -- who is our bat expert and myself at the National Audubon Convention presenting S.E.P.R.E. with a focus on #3 (Ballona Creek Renaissance) and #4 Project ( Least Tern, Tree Swallow and Mexican Free-Tailed Bat).
The final "Hoorah!" for S.E.P.R.E. will be our trip to the National Service Learning Conference where our entire S.E.P.R.E. team will present our projects.