News Detail
Marine Field Research
New course gets students out of the classroom and onto the bay
Introduction
Dr. Kristine Stump believes she teaches better on a boat than from a book. When she arrived to Ransom Everglades in 2018, Stump aspired to bring the most valuable elements of her marine science background into the classroom – which meant getting out of the traditional classroom and onto Biscayne Bay. Dr. Stump teamed up with two fellow RE teachers who also happened to be former classmates from the PhD program at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Dr. Stump, a shark ecologist, Dr. Brooke Gintert, a coral specialist, and Dr. Kelly Jackson, a marine geologist, put their minds and passions together and proposed a new course – Marine Field Research – at RE’s upper school for 2019-20. The goal of the course, which advances Ransom Everglades’ long tradition of experiential learning, is to get students out in the “field” – the bay, the ocean, marine geological sites – as much as possible to collect their own data and do their own research. The 23 upper school students who signed up for Marine Field Research did not need to purchase a textbook – the class doesn’t have one – but they did need to learn to scuba dive.
Back
Dr. Kristine Stump believes she teaches better on a boat than from a book. When she arrived to Ransom Everglades in 2018, Stump aspired to bring the most valuable elements of her marine science background into the classroom – which meant getting out of the traditional classroom and onto Biscayne Bay. Dr. Stump teamed up with two fellow RE teachers who also happened to be former classmates from the PhD program at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Dr. Stump, a shark ecologist, Dr. Brooke Gintert, a coral specialist, and Dr. Kelly Jackson, a marine geologist, put their minds and passions together and proposed a new course – Marine Field Research – at RE’s upper school for 2019-20. The goal of the course, which advances Ransom Everglades’ long tradition of experiential learning, is to get students out in the “field” – the bay, the ocean, marine geological sites – as much as possible to collect their own data and do their own research. The 23 upper school students who signed up for Marine Field Research did not need to purchase a textbook – the class doesn’t have one – but they did need to learn to scuba dive.
Field science is actually going out and collecting data, and collecting meaningful data requires preparation, knowledge, skills, persistence and thinking outside the box. We want to teach students how to observe something, how to ask good questions, how to do a literature review – to find out what we already know – and then come up with a hypothesis. Then a plan. Figure out how you are going to test your hypothesis, then go out and collect your data. We want them to travel to remote places, getting in the water, managing their gear, driving boats, hitching trailers, tying knots, organizing into teams, checking their lists – and deal with what will inevitably go wrong. When they fail at their first attempt at data collection, they have to come up with a different way, try again and keep repeating that until they get it. We also want to teach how to analyze data, graph it, do statistical analysis and then write about it. Present it to an audience of peers. Defend your conclusions. Share it persuasively with the science community, and share it clearly and succinctly on social media. We want to teach the full scientific process.
Dr. Kristine Stump
STEM faculty member
This is so far outside the boundary of a traditional high school science class. This course has components that we all have taught at the college and graduate level; it’s pretty advanced. We started by getting in the swimming pool to teach the students how to scuba dive. All of them earned their PADI Open Water Diver certification. We had a guest speaker from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection who explained the agency’s citizen science ‘BleachWatch’ program, where they encourage divers trained to survey to note coral bleaching and coral disease. So we taught them how to do that, then we took them out diving and they examined coral along the barrier reef tract just off of Key Biscayne. They found a bit of bleaching and a bit of disease, and we submitted that data to DEP. We also took them out seining, which is a way to measure biodiversity; you drag a net through the water and everything that is caught in the net we identify and then let it go. We took them out shark-tagging, which of course is my area of expertise. We went out with a local team that surveys shark species in Biscayne Bay and off-shore year round. Our kids were involved in the actual research; we tagged sharks, took blood for stress physiology research, assisted the scientists in the field. We will also be doing statistical analysis on that data. We’ve done work on land, too, examining sediment cores around specific sites in Miami, limestone outcroppings that provide insights into climate history. This spring we are doing coral outplanting, helping to replant nursery corals on the reef.
I feel like I teach best when I’m out on a boat because I can make a lesson out of anything. I can pick up Sargassum and shake it out and explain what’s in it and why it’s important. If there’s algae floating in the water, I can explain what’s happening there. If something swims by, I can identify it and I’ll explain that. If we’re standing in sea grass, that’s a whole lesson. It’s informal. I feel like we’re tricking them into learning. And we get to do what we love.
Our students have done great work in the classroom, too. For their final [first-semester] project, we had each choose a scientific research paper on a marine science topic of their choosing. They had to present the paper during five-minute lightning talks; they were evaluated by two classmates who had “peer-reviewed” the paper. You really have to get to the main point. You really have to understand the paper to distill the critical facts. And then you have to communicate it to your fellow students in a way they can understand. Finally, they had to “tweet” their papers in Google Classroom. The idea was to share the essence of their topics in really clear, engaging ways. Not surprisingly, they were shockingly good at that. They had funny hashtags. Their tweets were attention grabbers; they had good hooks.
It’s been a high-energy class. We all have our RE Marine Field Research diving shirts. We have to take care of each other. When we’re diving, we use a lot of hand signals, checking on one another, making sure everything is okay. We treat our class like a big team. I say “one team, one dream” all the time in class. It’s been a dream. We all love what we are doing every day.
I feel like I teach best when I’m out on a boat because I can make a lesson out of anything. I can pick up Sargassum and shake it out and explain what’s in it and why it’s important. If there’s algae floating in the water, I can explain what’s happening there. If something swims by, I can identify it and I’ll explain that. If we’re standing in sea grass, that’s a whole lesson. It’s informal. I feel like we’re tricking them into learning. And we get to do what we love.
Our students have done great work in the classroom, too. For their final [first-semester] project, we had each choose a scientific research paper on a marine science topic of their choosing. They had to present the paper during five-minute lightning talks; they were evaluated by two classmates who had “peer-reviewed” the paper. You really have to get to the main point. You really have to understand the paper to distill the critical facts. And then you have to communicate it to your fellow students in a way they can understand. Finally, they had to “tweet” their papers in Google Classroom. The idea was to share the essence of their topics in really clear, engaging ways. Not surprisingly, they were shockingly good at that. They had funny hashtags. Their tweets were attention grabbers; they had good hooks.
It’s been a high-energy class. We all have our RE Marine Field Research diving shirts. We have to take care of each other. When we’re diving, we use a lot of hand signals, checking on one another, making sure everything is okay. We treat our class like a big team. I say “one team, one dream” all the time in class. It’s been a dream. We all love what we are doing every day.
Dr. Kristine Stump
STEM faculty member
Middle School
2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 250 6850
Upper School
3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133Phone: 305 460 8800
Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.