Published on: Wednesday, March 10, 2010

By Rabiah Alicia Burks

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Teacher at Sea Program is celebrating 20 years of educating students through their teachers through hands-on research in various aspects of oceanic science.

For approximately two weeks, teachers are able to live with and assist researchers, scientists, engineers, and marines on one of 17 ships along the U.S. coastline and document their experiences on a program blog.

The Teacher at Sea Program receives 200 to 250 applications and they select a total of 30 to 35 teachers per year, said Elizabeth McMahon, Deputy Director of NOAA's Teacher at Sea Program.

"The main thing  we want them to do is to understand how hands-on science is done aboard a ship and then to bring that back to the classroom," said McMahon.

The Teacher at Sea Program is a national program that selects teachers from all over the nation to participate in various research with scientists, engineers and marines on the open ocean.

It started in 1990 in Seattle as a local program but later expanded to become a national program.

McMahon said the program has two main goals: to  increase environmental literacy, specifically ocean literacy, and to increase awareness of Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) careers.

A total of seven educators from Maryland have participated in the program, including Rebecca Bell, an environmental education specialist at the Maryland State Department of Education.

"For me, it was an opportunity to learn about the NOAA program  itself— the research program, careers and the different levels of education that NOAA can accommodate through these programs," said Bell.  "Everybody from high school graduates to Ph.D.s on that ship."

Bell said she maintained her daily blog so that teachers and students could read at any time about her experiences and things she learned.

"Because at the state department I don't have a classroom of students, what I did was kind of hook up at a state level with our ocean science teachers; we have ocean science elective," said Bell. "I tried to put in content I knew goes with our curriculum so it would help line up with things our teachers were teaching in the classroom."

Anthony Thomas, a former science teacher at Lucy D. Slowe Middle School in Washington, D.C. and Prince George's County resident, was also a participant in the Teacher at Sea Program.

"One of my passions is maps and charts, so I chose a nautical cruise that was doing the surveying on the continental ship off the coast of North Carolina that would eventually turn into a nautical chart of that area," said Thomas. "I learned the process from beginning to end of how a chart is actually made."

"It was a big thrill for me," said Thomas.

Thomas said that because the science curriculum at Lucy D. Slowe Middle School was an environmental science curriculum that incorporated charts and maps into the classroom, he was able to take what he learned on the ships and apply it to his class.

The Teacher at Sea Program sends teachers out to the open ocean and does not have a direct link to the Chesapeake Bay, McMahon said.

"However, there is an indirect link. It affects the bay because the research they are doing in the ocean, especially on the East Coast, affects the bay, or they can draw many inferences on what they learned out in the ocean and correlate back to the bay," said McMahon.

Some Maryland teachers said that NOAA's Teacher at Sea Program has not only enriched their ability to teach ocean science but taught them to also make vital connections between the ocean and the Chesapeake Bay.

Now, Thomas said that when he takes his students out on the Chesapeake Bay he is able to explain what is on the bottom of the bay, what scientist see in the research vessels and the ways it manifests itself into a physical chart, and how sailors use them.

"Of course, with my students in my classroom, we study the Chesapeake Bay and discuss the ecosystem and populations of communities in the Chesapeake Bay but the students know that the various organisms and species come from other bodies of water, like the Atlantic Ocean," said Elizabeth Martz, sixth-grade teacher at Middletown Middle School.

Martz participated in the Teacher at Sea program  in August  2007.

She teaches her students the ways in which the waters in Fredrick County connect to the Chesapeake Bay and how the Chesapeake Bay waters connect to the ocean.