Marine studies 



Summer school for teachers 



The North Carolina Marine Resources Center at 

 Bogue Banks is bustling with more than the usual ac- 

 tivity. This summer the center is the classroom for 34 

 North Carolina public school teachers. Their subject: 

 marine studies. 



The teachers are participating in two Sea Grant 

 projects designed to enrich marine education in the 

 public schools. The programs are being carried out in 

 cooperation with the North Carolina Department of 

 Public Instruction and the North Carolina Marine 

 Resource Centers. Public education is one of the 

 main functions of the three centers. 



"Sea Grant's interest in marine education is based 

 on the assumption that an educated public will be 

 more responsible in its decision-making about the 

 coast and ocean," explained Dr. William Rickards, 

 associate director of UNC Sea Grant. 



Looking at the environment 



Rickards is coordinator of the Marine Awareness 

 Program, which got underway at the Bogue Banks 

 center in June. Six teachers spent a week at the cen- 

 ter for an intensive introduction to marine science 

 and the facilities of the centers. They studied a 

 variety of marine environments, including the dunes, 

 beach fronts, ocean, marshes and maritime forests. 

 Then the teachers packed up and went home to work 

 individually on developing lesson plans for teaching 

 marine subjects in grades 6 through 9. 



The lesson plans will be designed to complement 

 physical, natural and earth science curricula already 

 used in those grades. Each teacher will produce a 

 lesson plan for about five hours of classroom instruc- 

 tion in a marine subject area. The plans will be writ- 

 ten so that they can be used in any middle school 

 classroom. But they can be most effectively used in 

 conjunction with a field trip to any one of the three 

 marine resources centers, Rickards pointed out. Dur- 

 ing the school year the centers host hundreds of 

 school groups from all over the state. 



The product of the teachers' research will be 

 printed packets of materials which will be avail- 

 ble to teachers through Sea Grant and the North 

 Carolina Department of Public Instruction. 



Jake Brown, a science consultant with the depart- 

 ment of public instruction, believes that the new 

 materials will be more appealing to the North 

 Carolina student than most textbooks. "Often the 

 books are so dry in their presentation that they can't 

 present the little exciting side views. We can do that. 

 Also all textbooks are national ... I think sometimes 

 that special materials are needed for North Caro- 

 lina," he said. Brown is on the steering committee for 

 the marine awareness program. 



A month-long teacher education program entitled 

 "Man and the Seacoast" got underway at the Bogue 

 Banks resources center July 18. Twenty-eight 



teachers from Currituck to Asheville are par- 

 ticipating in the multi-disciplinary course. They will 

 study everything from Thoreau's Cape Cod to the 

 geology of the North Carolina coastline. Environmen- 

 tal science, geology, oceanography, chemistry, coastal 

 zone planning, anthropology, sociology, economy and 

 literature are all on the course curriculum. 



"The problems that face the seacoast and its 

 development are not single-faceted problems. They 

 are multi-faceted. You have to understand the 

 economics as well as the technology," explained Dr. 

 Dirk Frankenberg, director of the Marine Sciences 

 Program at UNC-CH. Frankenberg and Dr. William 

 Still, history professor at East Carolina University, 

 are co-coordinators of the project. 



The teachers will hear eight guest lecturers from 

 various departments in the University of North 

 Carolina system. Each faculty member will present a 

 general interest public lecture on marine aspects of 

 his field, followed by two days of formal instruction. 

 Sunday and Wednesday night introductory lectures 

 at the center will be open to the public until the 

 course ends August 13. 



Teachers were selected on the basis of their 

 teaching skills and their interest in incorporating 

 marine science into the curricula of grades four 

 through eight. "Man and the Seacoast" is aimed at 

 the middle grades because they can best accom- 

 modate the inter-disciplinary approach. It is expected 

 that the course will be greeted with enthusiasm 

 because teachers at these grades generally have 

 fewer enrichment opportunities than teachers of 

 elementary or high school. 



Making lesson plans 



Working in groups, participants in the course will 

 help to convert the lectures into materials that can be 

 used to introduce other North Carolina teachers to 

 marine studies. The new materials will include 

 suggested lesson plans and project designs. The 

 teachers will be expected to share that information 

 with other middle school teachers in their school 

 systems during teacher work days next fall. They will 

 also receive three units of credit toward the required 

 renewal of their teaching certificates. 



Course activities will not be confined to the 

 classrooms of the resources center. "The idea is to 

 provide them (the teachers) with an experience as 

 well as some information. We're going to talk about 

 these things and let them see them too," said 

 Frankenberg. 



Field trips will be an essential part of the course. 

 Among those planned are a trip to nearby areas to 

 study native plants and animals, a visit to the fish- 

 ing and boat building community of Harkers Island 

 and a trip to an excavated site of an ancient Indian 

 fishing camp. 



