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Lake Lesson

By Harrison Wilde

Standing in front of the Lake Guardian, which
docked in Oswego Thursday morning, are teachers and scientists participating in
a weeklong cruise designed to teach teachers selected from all over the
Northeast first-hand about Lake Ontario.

Photos

By Alex Drake

The Palladium-Times

Thu Jul 17, 2008, 06:43 PM EDT

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Oswego, N.Y. -

The Lake Guardian docked in Oswego’s west side port early Thursday morning
with most of its crew topside to enlighten those on hand of their activities and
duties. The annual science expedition can be summarized as “teaching the
teachers,” according to the trip’s Web Content Manager Paul Focazio.

Supported by the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE),
an organization funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
Guardian stopped in Oswego slightly after the halfway point of their weeklong
scientific voyage.

According to COSEE’s Web site, the weeklong cruise offers first-hand
explorations of Lake Ontario’s geography, resources, processes and issues.
It demonstrates how Great Lakes science parallels the science of the world’s
oceans.

Highlights of the trip include passage through the Welland Canal,
cruising the EPA water quality supply sampling stations on Lake Ontario and
stops in ports such as Oswego and Clayton.

The basic goal of the trip is to give educators hands-on experience to
return to their classroom with to educate students about the nature of Lake
Ontario.

According to Focazio, this specific trip started  Sunday and will
end Saturday in Buffalo.
“They’ve been all over Lake Ontario,” Focazio said,
“and have been doing a bunch of soil and water samples throughout the lake.
We’re just trying to give them a sense of the well roundedness of Lake
Ontario.”

“They’re (the teachers) going to be going back to their classrooms and
trying to integrate the information they’ve learned,” he said.

There are 16 teachers on board, primarily from the Upstate New York
region, along with three educators whose job it is to teach the teachers.

Focazio is documenting the teachers’ experience online at
www.coseegreatlakes.net/weblog.

This is not the first trip for event coordinator Helen Domske, New York
Sea Grant Coastal Education specialist, who has been on several science
expeditions before on the Lake Guardian.

According to Domske, she coordinates “all activities for COSEE Great
Lakes on Lake Ontario.” This specific boat is the only COSEE boat in fresh
bodies of water, Domske pointed out.

Domske is working with teachers to develop journals and teaching tools to
bring back to their classrooms.

As well as their annual summer trip, which next year will focus on lakes
Superior and Huron, COSEE does workshops for teachers throughout the year in New
York.

Domske’s specific department of COSEE and the New York State Sea Grant is
located at the University of Buffalo.

Anneliese Bopp of Sodus Intermediate School in Sodus believes this was a
once-in-a-lifetime experience and she will use everything she gets out of it
thoroughly.
Bopp, who teaches sixth-grade science said, “There is so much
I’ve learned that I can incorporate into my curriculum.”

Recalling how she first got involved into the project Bopp said, “It was
one of those chance things …  a great opportunity that looked like
something that just couldn’t be missed.”

“It’s been an incredible opportunity,” said Bopp, “I’ve learned more in
the past four days than I can remember learning. I’m still on information
overload, but I’m looking forward to taking the time to process everything and
figure out how to work it in … After going back, we can show our kids this is
how scientists really do it.”

Lead scientist on the Guardian, Dr. Gregory Boyer of SUNY College of
Environmental Science and Forestry, said he was impressed by the teachers’
capacity to learn and the fast rate at which they did.

According to Boyer, “They are very good learners … by now, they’re like a
well-polished team, they can just crank through it.”

Boyer initially believed they would need a lot more time to walk the
teachers through the different scientific procedures they would be taking part
in.

The 180-foot vessel Lake Guardian will not be returning to Lake Ontario
for approximately another five years. It will be spending its next few years
surveying other Great Lakes.

According to its Web site, COSEE’s goal is to foster the integration of
ocean research into high-quality educational materials, allow ocean researchers
to gain a better understanding of educational organizations and pedagogy,
provide educators with an enhanced capacity to understand and deliver
high-quality educational programs in the ocean sciences.

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