Green Eggs & Sand - Part VII

Back at the GE&S workshop in New Jersey on that first night, we are engaged in a Horseshoe Crab Molt Lab exercise in which we must identify some of the anatomy and physiology of various (now dead) horseshoe crabs.  This is a hands-on exercise in observational skills, classification, sexing, and measuring.  At each of eight stations we are asked to examine a now-dead horseshoe crab and respond to a series of exploratory questions.

            I am paired with Tracee Panetti who has been teaching science at the high school level for ten years.  Although she’s lived near the shore, she’s not all that familiar with horseshoe crabs.  She sees the GE&S workshop as a unique way of getting her students interested in large environmental issues as well as local concerns.  She wants to introduce students to the ways in which horseshoe crabs are really a part of their everyday lives.  She’s excited about the prospects and takes voluminous notes as we do the eight stations on the lab exercises. 
            Tracee tells me that she wants to use horseshoe crabs as a comparison of different animals - a comparison of an invertebrate to a vertebrate (shorebirds) and then also learn about the interaction between the two – bringing a lot of the information together.  She is amazed by all the interactions between the two.  But what she finds particularly exciting is the migration of the birds and how horseshoe crabs have been misused.  She’s emphatic when she tells me that the materials she’s gathering at the workshop will help her make that comparison; specifically that her students will be able to do those comparisons.
            I’m curious as to how her students are going to react to that information as opposed to how they might react to the typical science curriculum.  An enormous smile crosses her face as she tells me, “I think they’re going to be fascinated.  What we are doing tonight is showing a lot about how these animals developed.  [Students] will be able to learn about creatures they may have heard about, but not paid much attention to.  They’re going to be much more fascinated by this.  They’ll begin to see how important biology is – becoming aware of how biology can influence decisions – politically and environmentally.”