Our Proposal

RATIONALE AND PURPOSE FOR FELLOWSHIP:

When thinking about your teaching practice, what would you like to learn?  What are the key questions you want to explore?  What challenge or passion inspires your proposed fellowship?

Four middle school teachers have joined together to become the Our National Parks Team. Our team brings together two sixth grade teachers, science and language arts, and two eighth grade teachers, also science and language arts. Schools in Oklahoma are in the process of preparing students to meet newly adopted Common Core State Standards. Informational texts are stressed in the CCSS and all subject areas are being asked to work together to support literacy. Our national parks are a perfect source for bringing passionate debate and high-interest, complex texts into the classroom. The new standards require bringing student to a deeper understanding of a text. Students engage more deeply when they have a personal stake in issues that will affect their lives. Using national parks as the center of the new curriculum will also ensure that students have been introduced to lands that belong to them. For some of our students, our newly created units will be their first introduction to their national parks.

The team will investigate issues the Park Service has faced as they have worked to carry out the mission to promote, conserve, and protect the units under their supervision. As we learn more about the complex issues facing our national parks, we will have the first-hand experience with which to engage our students in a deep understanding of the issues involved. Each of the parks we will visit will provide material for our new curricular units.

Focusing on life science for our sixth grade, we will research the threat of white-nose syndrome to the brown bat population at Wind Cave National Park.  At Yellowstone and Teton National Parks, we will investigate the health and size of the habitats within ecosystems in the parks.

Our eighth grade teachers will focus on earth science, documenting the geological forces responsible for creating our national parks, such as the hydrothermal features in Yellowstone and the reasons for the variety of secondary cave formations at Wind Cave. In the Tetons, we will learn of the geological forces which created the mountains, and we will explore reasons for the interpretation of evidence surrounding the geological origin of the tower at Devil’s Tower National Monument.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Describe and outline in detail you proposed fellowship. What key activities will you pursue, and why are they important?  What is the time frame for achieving the goal outlined in the rationale and purpose?

The Our National Parks team will gather curriculum from four national parks on a twelve day study tour. Wind Cave and Devil’s Tower will only require one day each. We will spend seven days total in Yellowstone and Teton National Parks. Guided tours through the Yellowstone Institute will give the team access normally only available to locals. With three private tours of the Yellowstone and the Teton areas, the team will dialogue with experts who are knowledgeable about the parks and the complexity of the competing needs for the land use within these areas. We will be able to accomplish our goal of creating new curricular units centered on high-interest informational texts from which our students can learn about their national parks and more about the world in which they will live.

Day 1 will require eleven hours of driving to reach the Alliance Hotel and Suites in Alliance, Nebraska. This will bring us within two and one half hours of our first national park.

On day 2, we will take two tours of Wind Cave in Wind Cave National Park where we will learn how climatic changes in water in the environment in the region result in changes within the cave. We will distinguish between rock formations which promote different types of secondary cave characteristics.

The Natural Entrance Cave Tour will allow us to video a barometric pressure demonstration of how the winds at the mouth of the cave blow in or out depending on barometric pressure within the cave. We will also learn how white-nose syndrome is affecting the bats of Wind Cave. Bats from the East Coast to Missouri and Oklahoma are dying, and it might be humans who are responsible. We will collect data about changes in the bat population at Wind Cave and the park’s response to the potential threat posed by continued human visitors. In the afternoon, we will take the one and one half hour Fairground’s Tour of another section of this large cave complex for more examples of secondary cave characteristics. We will be staying at a Day’s Inn in Custer, SD.

Day 3 will begin with a two hour drive to Devil’s Tower National Monument where we will document for students the effect of water on the surface of the earth. We will take the one and one half hour Tower Walk Tour around the base of the tower where we will study the controversy surrounding the geologic origins of this National Monument. At this site we will video our science teachers in a passionate debate about the evidence supporting theories of the tower’s origin. Taking the role of geologists representing the volcanic plug theories and the theory that the tower is evidence of an ancient volcano, our teachers will highlight the key points in the geologists’ debate. Then after lunch in the park, will continue two and one half hours to the Best Western in Sheridan, Wyoming which is two hours and forty-five minutes from the East Entrance of Yellowstone.         

In five days in Yellowstone National Park, we have planned a combination of private tours through the Yellowstone Institute, National Park Service Ranger programs, and self-led studies. We will stay at Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge for the next three nights in the northeastern corner of the park where we will focus on the biodiversity of the park, including the impact of non-native species on the ecosystem. When we arrive in the park on day 4, we will take a ranger-guided hike of the travertine formations where will learn how these formations are still evolving. On day 5 we will spend eight hours with a Yellowstone Institute wolf biologist on a private tour to explore the complex issues surrounding the reintroduction of a predator in the national park. With the wolf biologist helping us see the world through the eyes of the wolf, we will be prepared to direct our student’s research about this often misunderstood animal. On day 6 we will take a self-led day hike of the Beaver’s Pond loop trail where wildlife sightings are common.  We will return to the wolf viewing areas at dusk for additional opportunities to see these animals and observe their behaviors in the wild. On day 7 the focus will be directed to the geologic features of the park for the eighth grader’s earth science study. We will head south following the Gibbon River to the Norris Geyser Basin with an Institute geologist and learn more about the volcanic origins of the hydrothermal features of the park, including geysers, mud pots, and hot springs which were the reason for the area’s original designation as a national park. We will move to the Lake Hotel on the southern loop in the park for the next two nights giving us easier access to the trails around Yellowstone Lake. On day 8 in a day hike on the Storm Point Trail, we will observe more wildlife in their natural habitat. For example, yellow-bellied marmots live in a large colony in the rocky area near the point. When guiding student research, we will have first-hand experience with the habitat of the marmots.

Leaving Yellowstone through the south entrance on day 9, our team will spend two days in Grand Teton National Park. On the first day in the park, the geological origins of the mountain range will be our focus, starting at the Moose Visitor Center where there will be a ranger interpretation using a relief map of the entire range. On day 10 we will meet an Institute biologist for eight hour tour of the Grand Teton area focusing on the ongoing debates about the protection of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The animals in Yellowstone are dependent upon the corridor provided by the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in order to be protected when migrating to their winter grounds. The team will gather perspective and resources for planning group projects for our sixth graders focusing on the animals, their habitats, and the limiting factors in the ecosystem. We will collect information about the size of the current corridor adjacent to the Yellowstone and Teton areas and needs of the animal populations in order to sustain the ecosystem.

On day 11 we will drive 8 hours to Ft. Collins, Colorado and stay in a Comfort Inn before beginning the drive home.

TEACHER GROWTH AND LEARNING

How will your fellowship help you address your key questions and /or learning goals?  How will this fellowship help you grow as a teacher?

The classroom often feels like an island where standardized test scores are the ultimate goal rather than inspiring students. Our team will provide an example for the rest of the faculty to change that mindset. The Our National Parks Team will work together to support literacy skills. Developing a structure for effective collaboration is our goal. This interdisciplinary team will be leaders in this process at our school. This fellowship brings together different teaching styles, different philosophies of teaching, and different life experiences from which we can all learn. From these diverse backgrounds, we will have the opportunity to not only improve instruction for our students, but to also grow ourselves. As teachers with a new depth of knowledge, we will support student’s experience with higher level texts by having the first-hand knowledge of our subjects. Our team will gain the depth of understanding necessary to help students connect to the text in a way they might miss through a more cursory reading. We will return from this fellowship having made connections with real-world experts. We will return with primary resources for our students to be competitive in the new learning environment.

STUDENT GROWTH AND LEARNING

How will students benefit from your proposed fellowship?  What meaningful additions will this experience bring to the classroom?

Our students come from varied backgrounds including parents in the oil business as well as from rural farming families. Many come from hunting and fishing backgrounds. This prepares them to easily connect to conservation issues. In the future, compromises will be required between parties interested in the conservation of the environment and those interested in real estate development and energy extraction. Economic concerns will have to be balanced against the need to protect the environment so that the land will be conserved for future generations. Our students will need to have depth of knowledge about environmental issues and critical thinking skills in order to balance competing interests in an increasingly complex world. Resolving a conflict requires compromise, but compromise cannot be reached without all parties involved having knowledge of and the ability to discern pertinent evidence. Real-world applications are more motivating and meaningful to students. Students care more if they see the correlation between what they are learning and their own lives.

BENEFITS TO SCHOOL COMMUNITY:

How will your fellowship experience contribute to your school community’s efforts to engage students and improve learning?  How will you share the fellowship learning with colleagues?

This team will contribute to this school community by investing in our own lifelong learning and by modeling how teachers can collaborate to plan cross-curricular projects. We will demonstrate how language arts classrooms can support and assist research and writing while students are working on projects for their science classes. As we discuss and evaluate our results, we will share best practices with our colleagues during departmental and grade level meetings.

As a model of how collaboration allows different perspectives to be acknowledged and considered, we will keep a journal of our study. Quotations, reactions, reflections, descriptions will be equally acceptable. The assigned photographer for each day will produce the blog posting using selections from that day’s written reflections. Our students will then continue post to our blog as they complete research tasks for our classes.