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MBL Reaches Out to the Community:
Teachers Discover the Microbial World Within at MBL Workshop
The Josephine Bay Paul Center hosted a three-day enhancement workshop in March for 24 high school teachers, including several from Cape Cod. Using Wolbachia"a parasitic bacteria that live within insects" as a model, workshop participants learned how microorganisms and their hosts interact. The workshop was designed to provide teaching tools and bring new life to science classes for high school teachers and undergraduate lecturers in the biological sciences.
Led by faculty from across the U.S., including Bay Paul Center scientists Michele Bahr, Seth Bordenstein, and Jennifer Wernegreen, teachers conducted hands-on laboratory exercises on microbes, symbiosis, insect biology, and evolution. "The workshop was a fantastic success," says Bordenstein. "The teachers were engaged, inquisitive, and enthused to bring these new lesson plans and labs back to their students. It is important that we continue the MBL's long-standing tradition of engaging the local education community in a clear and vibrant manner. We hope this workshop will form enduring ties for many years to come."
Lesson plans emphasized activities that can be used easily and inexpensively in the classroom to teach basic biological principles and covered insect collection and biodiversity, the bacteria that live within insects, DNA extraction, and simple molecular biology and evolutionary analysis skills.
"It was great to be in a group with such distinguished and accomplished teachers to learn what is being explored," says workshop participant Naomi Volain, a teacher at Springfield Central High School in Springfield, Massachusetts. Volain is already planning an insect collection lesson with her students. "I didn't think I'd be able to do anything with the DNA extraction/gel electrophoresis, since we are a poor district with a poor science budget," explains Volain. "But when I returned [from the workshop] I learned that my department head would be investing in the equipment and supplies for next year, so I hope to use that part of the workshop then."
Molly Shabica, a teacher at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in Bronx, New York, is also taking what she's learned at the MBL back to her students. "For the past two years I have done a lab using gel electrophoresis in my classroom with my 9th and 10th graders. Now, having experienced the Wolbachia workshop I am better prepared to extend this skill to a unit on inquiry and experimental design. I hope to be able to replicate the process we went through at the MBL to determine the presence of Wolbachia in insects we collect."
Workshop presentations and lesson plans are available for teachers to download at http://research.amnh.org/FIBR/workshops.html. "We put the website together to allow the workshop attendees to have immediate access to the workshop presentations and labs," says Bordenstein. "In addition, free, online access to these materials will allow the workshop to reach a much broader audience than just the teachers who attended."
The workshop was sponsored by the NASA Astrobiology Institute and National Science Foundation.
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