From the Students of a Teacher Researcher Experience

You might wonder why middle school students in South Florida would be so interested in the Arctic. It's because our science teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Eubanks, is always reminding us "we are all connected, we are all affected." She has participated and involved us in several interesting and exciting projects involving the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Polar TREC (Teachers & Researchers Exploring & Collaborating). These unique relationships are called Teacher Researcher Experiences (TRE), which makes us Students of Teacher Researcher Experiences (SoTRE).

In 2007 Mrs. Eubanks spent two weeks at sea off the coast of California aboard the ship David Starr Jordan as a part of NOAA's Teachers at Sea Program. All of her students followed her adventure by reading her daily journals that were posted on the Internet. During the next school year we followed the movements of the sharks that were tagged that summer.

In 2008, Mrs. Eubanks went to Barrow, Alaska, with Dr. Steven Oberbauer, a professor from Florida International University (FIU) and Paulo Olivas, a doctoral student from FIU. They studied the effects of carbon fluxes on the Arctic tundra. Once again, we followed the project through Mrs. Eubanks's online journal entries. There were two webinars during the summer. Some of the students took part in a cross-continental germination experiment with alfalfa seeds.

The entire school year we celebrated the International Polar Year (IPY). We began and concluded this event with surveys. We had morning announcements, monthly Arctic themes, and a Polar Earth Day celebration. Each middle school student wrote a research paper. Then, in small groups, we prepared displays and oral presentations to teach the younger students in our school (pre-kindergarten through fifth grade) what we had learned about the Arctic or Antarctic. We peer reviewed each other's work and participated as both students and teachers.

Our students are working with Dr. Oberbauer on a project measuring the growth of the White Mangrove trees in the mangrove park behind our school using dendrometers. We are tracking weather patterns using a weather station and an Open Top Chamber (OTC) donated by Dr. Oberbauer.

Being a SoTRE is very interesting. Science comes alive. We take advantage of the latest technology to follow experiments taking place from the Arctic to the Tropics. We see how interconnected we all are and how we can work together for a better tomorrow.