studies relevant and exciting. CLEARING Teaching resources for ecology, sustainability and community


The hav the kno pro


Middle school students use a transect line and quadrat to survey the intertidal zone at a local beach.


Bringing the Ocean into Schools... and Schools to the Ocean


By Catherine and Joachim Carolsfeld 4. Community Connections


“I like the discoveries of the sea tank each time I look at it.” (10 year old Elementary School Student)


“Some specimens in our tank that are local I didn’t even know of, and I’ve been around the oceans since I was really little.” (Grade 11 student)


A Page 12


few years back, a group of elementary school students in Victoria noticed an empty salmon tank in their class- room. They wondered: could it be used to study a marine ecosystem?


Those students didn’t stop too long to wonder. Instead,


they became the driving force behind setting up and caring for a chilled, saltwater aquarium in their school. Parents and other community volunteers, some of whom were marine biologists and divers, helped find the chiller, pump and other supplies they needed to build a prototype tank. Then they obtained the neces- sary permits to stock it with plants and animals from their local


shorelines, and students began to study their new ocean ecosys- tem.


Six months later, they decided to share what they had learned


with the rest of their community. They chose a school assembly to make their presentations about the plants and animals they had been getting to know, and invited their parents to listen. Jamie, a grade seven student who had been loathe to engage


The students primed by the Seaquaria environmental awareness in the comm received a phone call from the manag the center was planning its first neighb were on the Seaquarium Marine Team


in classroom learning, spoke with passion and enthusiasm about a nondescript marine animal called a sea squirt for which he had gained new-found respect. A parent sitting in the audience com- mented, “That can’t be right. They’re just creatures, not animals!”


Creatures as Teachers By the end of the assembly, that parent knew that creatures


like the lowly sea squirt were animals, and they were teachers too. Students, staff and parents had already begun to think about their world in a different way, thanks to the passion and commitment of those grade six and seven students. We began to understand


www.clearingmagazine.org/online CLEARING 2010


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