Susan Landon
Denver

Back to School

YEA Activities

Getting Back to Nature

And the Winners Are ...

Reaching Out

Back to School

A Family Affair

Going With the Flow

Passion + Geology = Normal

Teaching the Teachers

My goal each year is to speak to at least one K-12 class in the Denver area. The first step is to get invited and then figure out age-appropriate material based on the teacher's request.

Generally, the teacher is looking for a presentation to complement the topic being studied by the class -- and frequently, with the younger kids, the invitation is to speak about dinosaurs.

Teachers are very willing to accept a more generic discussion of geologic time and historical geology. It is amazing how all of my talks seem to have resources creep in along the way.

One of the tools that I have successfully used in younger classes, I openly copied from a ranger at the Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada:

Using a 50-foot tape measure, I tell the kids we are going to compare distance to time. Assuming each inch equals one million years, the tape represents 600 million years -- roughly the start of the Paleozoic. Students participate by holding various points on the tape as it is unwound around the classroom: the present, the end of the dinosaurs, the first dinosaur, early life. I illustrate many of the major events with fossils that are from rocks of that age.

One little girl asked me when Adam and Eve lived; after some quick thinking, I had her hold the tape at the first appearance of the genus Homo (without any editorial comment).

Another time I gave a presentation on geologic hazards to third graders. Several months later I received a call from the teacher, who said she had just talked to one of the kids' parents, who were in the process of buying a new house. The child asked the realtor if the house was on swelling soils! The adults were astounded, and when the parents followed up on the question, the neighborhood had had problems with swelling soils.

I keep thinking about the more informed citizens that can be produced because of geologists willing to talk about geology in the schools -- or for Rotary clubs, churches and other adult groups.