Passion + Geology = Normal

In this instance, I was volunteering as a mentor to four fifth grade students at Denver's Kaiser Elementary public school. Ed Post of Dinosaur Ridge and I tag-teamed to instruct them on the geologic time scale.

The project took one day per week over a five-week period. During that time, we took field trips to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and to Dinosaur Ridge for research into how life changed through geologic history.

With this information, these young paleontologists (does this make them micro-paleontologists?) created a time line stretching from the late Precambrian to the present, with one inch equaling five million years. After completion of the project, they presented the final product to their classes.

I also have given multiple presentations in schools on what is involved in becoming a geologist, areas of geologic employment, and why in the world anyone would want to follow this course of action. The presentation is a combination of slides, rocks, and other visual aids, such as books (the Big Red Book is a BIG hit), maps, cross sections and seismic lines.

The goal of the presentation is to impart an impression that being passionate about rocks is not weird, and that studying, reading, writing, arithmetic, computer science and art are essential in being a complete scientist.