Well it is FINALLY spring here, with the snow almost completely gone in the valley. And it's been raining the past couple of days which really makes me miss McMinnville! Not to mention the fact that conference championships were this weekend =(
First in the long list of news, I will be attending the University of Wyoming next year to finish up my masters in Natural Science with a focus in Natural Science Education! All of us that applied got in, so we are currently on the hunt for apartments and trying to figure out exactly what we want next year to look like.
Winter practicum flew by, and we're halfway done with spring practicum as well. I've loved outreach so far, getting to work in a classroom with younger kids, but it's definitely been the most stressful of practicums so far!
We're well into our Advanced Elements of Field Ecology Course Design (AEFECD) class now, and heading to Yellowstone for some front country camping tomorrow! Over the last three weeks we have learned about backwards design when planning for a unit, and we dove into some natural history of the area as well.
We spent two days each on insects, mammals, birds and plants. I don't have photos from insect or mammal days, but for birds we went to observe the sage grouse lek out by Mormon Row. It was freezing and some of us got a little sidetracked looking at other wildlife and taking pictures, but it was a cool experience.
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| Looking through the scopes |
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| I'm not yet skilled at taking pictures through scopes |
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| Entertaining ourselves |
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| Look over there! |
We got to hang out with Doug Wachob for two days. He knows so much about birds! I'll never be able to remember it all.
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| Katherine demonstrating some adaptations of birds with Doug |
We also had to dissect birds to get some hands on practice with their anatomy. I wasn't exactly pleased. Aracely and I got a Dusky Grouse to work with, and let's just say she did most of the actual dissecting.
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| Before |
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| During |
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| After - ick! |
The next two days were spent on botany which was much more my speed! I know a lot of woody plants, but not the herbaceous ones! We got to learn some flower anatomy and formulas, and then dissected some flowers. Way better than birds.
We've had fridays off for a couple weeks now, and this past one we spent a few hours working in a community garden in Kelly. It was a lot of fun and good way to keep our minds off of schoolwork for a while. Not that it worked too well, we kept trying to identify birds that flew overhead and name parts of weeds that we pulled up!
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| The earth movers! |
A few weeks ago we went climbing again. I was not as successful this time, but it was still fun, but REALLY windy and cold. It made it quite difficult to hold onto the rock face when I couldn't feel my fingers....
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| Nick |
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| Wyatt |
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| Julia |
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| Ben took over the camera while I climbed |
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| Me |
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| Some of the gang |
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| Martha |
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| Ben |
So this week we head to Yellowstone for my second attempt at camping. When I talked to Aaron about how this time will be different than backpacking, he told me "it's called California camping". I'm hoping it's more up my alley than the backcountry!
Our capstone team for the summer is in the midst of planning for Jackson Hole Science Expeditions. We will have 11th and 12th graders as well as a few freshmen in college for 4 weeks. During that time we teach them based on curriculum that we've planned throughout the course of AEFECD and after. It should be a fun summer!
My goal is to have another post up next week with all the pictures from Yellowstone!
~Meghan
