Educator "Up Close"

Becky Barney Dowell Elementary School Calvert County

Degree: Masters Degree - University of Western Maryland; Bachelors Degree - St. Mary's College of Maryland.

Experience: Past ten years teaching second grade at Patuxent Elementary school. Moved to Dowell Elementary School in 1999 to teach third grade.

Subject: All.

"Most Memorable" Teaching Experience: Watching students (especially girls) overcome their "yuck" response and learn to appreciate creatures such as red wigglers (composting worms) and oyster habitat dwellers.

Favorite Class Trips: Learning about oysters with Jackie Takacs on our oyster gardening trips to Chesapeake Biological Lab, Piney Point Oyster Hatchery and on the Dee of St. Mary's Skipjack to plant oysters. Students are responsible for cleaning the Taylor float, measuring the oysters, and collecting relevant data. The students are amazed as they participate in an oyster "feeding & spitting" experiments and oyster dissections.

Awards and Grants: Three years of Chesapeake Bay Trust funding for our oyster gardening project

Teaching Techniques: Performance based activities such as oyster gardening, schoolwide composting, paper recycling, and caring for a crab in a salt water tank.

Future Plans: Build a compost site at my new school, participate in Bay Grasses in Classes program with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Aquaculture-in-Action Program sponsored by Maryland Sea Grant.

Educator "Up Close Candidates

Do you know someone that would be a good candidate for the "Up Close" column? If so, send us some information and we would be glad to look it over. Thanks.

http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/Extension/msgsnn/msgsnn02_2/educator.html