Fresh Ideas from the Community

I love getting out into the community and finding new things to do and new connections for young people.  There are so many resources available to support learning, and to support good fun.  

New Community Resource and a Bit of Science

This was a pretty low-key week.  It ended pretty spectacularly for me, though.  I had an end of Friday meeting scheduled with our District community partner, the BioBus.  I have used them in my time as a science teacher, and have been happy to help support their strong connection to our school district. 

To build upon this partnership, my BioBuddy colleague asked me to meet with her at the Lower East Side Ecology Center and learn about their space.  The BioBus and LES Eco Center have partnered together for some time.  I walked through my district to get to the Eco Center so I could see what it was like to travel there by foot.

Walking over the foot bridge, I was met by a nice little park space with paved courts and lawns.  There were a variety of landscaped areas and others a bit overgrown.  The park space extended right to the East River beneath the Williamsburg bridge.  At the water's edge is a large, red brick building where the Eco Center is housed.

I entered the Center and found myself surrounded by various aquaria and other habitats.  My excitement level grew when I noticed a BioBus microscope set up in a corner of the room.  My science-y brain went into overdrive, and perhaps sensing I was already not in planning mode, the educator from the Center decided it was a good time to tour the space.

I found myself revisiting knowledge I had acquired in my days of working with NYC's biggest little zoo, the Staten Island Zoo.  I was observing aquatic animals living in aquaponic habitats.  I learned about an invasive species of crab and got to see a spider crab up close.  I learned about the oyster toadfish, glass shrimp, and other natural NYC denizens.

A New Ecological Issue

In our conversations around the Eco Center, I learned that once ceramic tiles are fired and glazed, they can not be reused.  I had no idea that this was a problem.  When tiles are pulled from homes, unless they are used in mosaic tiling or other art installations, they are typically unusable and end up in landfills.

The Eco Center serves as a site for the Billion Oyster Project in NYC.  They have oyster baskets hanging in the East River where they grow oysters for the BO Project.  These baskets end up as habitats for other organisms.  We pulled one basket up, and I was able to observe the growing oysters, as well as some baby oyster toadfish, a few invasive crabs, and some glass shrimp.

But the ceramic tiles caught my eye.  I asked how they were being used, and we brought one in to the microscope.  The surface was covered with a variety of organisms.  Bryozoans created a network of cells on the surface of the ceramic tile.  Once these organisms died, their exoskeletons remain on the tiles and serve as substrate for other organisms to colonize the tile.  It was an interesting way to use a resource that otherwise might end up in a landfill.

Microscopic Fun
Perhaps the most fun was exploring the structures of living things we found from the oyster basket.  There were hydroids, one of which had caught a Daphnia in its tentacles.  WE zoomed in on the eye of a Daphnia and were able to see its golf-ball like structure.  There were nematodes and flatworms, and copepods, oh my!  (see pictures below)

The visit wasn't all about microbiological good times.  After seeing all that I had seen that afternoon, we panned time to bring science teachers from across my district down to the Eco Center to have these same experiences and to help them plan the same for students across all of our schools.  

How do you use community resources as a space for inquiry and curiosity?

Side Note:  I finished the painting from last week.  It is no masterpiece, by any means, but I was pretty damn proud of myself for finishing something that looked vaguely like the photo that inspired it.  I'm excited to try again.  See the reference picture and painting below, if interested.

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Bryozoan skeleton structure

Daphnia eye

Hydroid tentacles