The Herp Project

Aquatic Turtles at the Elon pond

vivana — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:32:44 +0000

My Herpetology class and I set out a summer morning to and nearby pond. Our instructor Dr. Tomasek had set turtles traps and ounce we arrived to the pond we geared up with our suits preparing to start our expedition of capturing aquatic turtles. We got to examine them up close out of the water and set them back free into the pond.

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Rachel Carson

emelim — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:29:52 +0000

Close to the end of September we went to Atlantic Beach. We went there to learn about sea turtles. While on the trip we did lots of fun things. I really loved it when we went to Carrot Island on the Rachel Carson Reserve. To get where we were going to have our lunch we had to walk through mud. It wasn’t exaclty fun, but it was interesting…

After lunch we were able to go in the water and see if we could find anything. I was unable to find something really amazing but towards the end I found me an almost perfect sand dollar. It was the best way to leave before having to truck through the mud again.

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Herp Project

promisen — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:28:29 +0000

In Herpetology we are making a record of our findings in and outside the classroom. This book contains trips to beaches and mountains, and also our study of reptiles and amphibians in our community. Through these discoveries we hope to better understand these organisms and their habitats.

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Turtle Pond

juant — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:28:22 +0000

It was a damp summer morning on Elon’s Campus. The Elon Academy Herpetology class was traveling to a pond on the other side of the campus, hoping to catch and mark turtles. A few days prior to the trip, our instructor placed a series of turtle traps in the pond that would snare the turtles. We pulled each trap, two at a time, and caught a couple of snapping turtles along with some sliders. One of the traps had encased a giant snapping turtle. When we had pulled it out of the water, it gaped its mouth and trudged quickly backed in. We left in the afternoon with memories I would never forget.

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The Coastal Project

elijahm — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:26:09 +0000

On the coastal trip we went to the beach and seen a lot of amazing things. We seen Whelks and wild horses, sand dollars, and fiddler crabs. We stayed in dorms at the marine lab and we interacted with other students from all over North Carolina that were interested in herpetology and spent the whole weekend with them. We also had the time to see a necrospy (of turtle). We looked at the inside of a turtle looked. The smell was horrible but it was a fantastic experience. I love HERPS!

As you can see nobody like the smell.

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NC Herpetology Society Meeting

miriamg — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:24:13 +0000

When we were at the NC Herpetology Society Meeting my favorite part was the first presentation. The presentation was about anoles and the way that it was presented to us was really good. I was really interested in all the information that was provided to us. One thing that I really liked were the jokes included within the presentation because it made us all smile.

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Herp soceity meeting

quintonr — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:23:17 +0000

Last November we went to the herp society meeting. One of the things I liked about it was the speed mentoring. During this time we were able to talk to differnt people that work in the feild of herpatology but in differnt ways. One man I talked to worked at the musem of life and science.He said he loved what he did and working with these animals made him happy. These mentors all gave me good advice about college and herpatology. I also liked how they had the auction at the end and i got a lolllipop with a snake eating a rat at the end.

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Vernal Pool

koreyc — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:19:54 +0000

One day, on a beautiful summer morning, the Herpetology class of Elon Academy went to a vernal pool. A vernal pool is a body of water that tends to evaporate and refill itself over the course of one year.

In this vernal pool, all of the students looked for newts and salamanders. We found many different life forms including newt eggs. Afterwards, we washed up and left.

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Happy December!

angiee — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 15:16:18 +0000

Good Morning Guys!

I am so glad that December is finally here and I get to hang out with you this morning. We had a great time at the NC Herps Society Meeting last month and I’m excited to hear what you thought about it. Have a great day!

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Imagining Transformations

The Herp Project — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 12:26:51 +0000

Inspiration for this post

Inspiration for this post was found in the HRE participants that have been at Rockfish Camp and Retreat Center since Sunday. Today I was able to join Apache, Bailey, Brandon, Charlie, and Jennifer in the Box Turtle group along with John Rucker and his turtle dogs! What I learned as these youth talked with me left me inspired and affirmed exactly what I know to be true of the opportunities afforded by The HERP Project’s HREs. When asked what they’d like the world to know about being at the HRE, they wanted to share that the HRE allowed them to do things that they’d never done. WOW! Here we have high school students who WANT to learn and do science during their summer vacation. How cool is that?

Since 2007, I’ve watched and interacted with high schoolers who have attended similar HRE experiences. Each year I am amazed with participants’ engagement in science, with one another and with the project leaders. I have come to realize that they embrace the challenges that seem to be associated with field biology and science in general. They work hard learning scientific vocabulary/terms, about mark and recapture studies, how to creatively solve problems and they enjoy being part of a community. In fact, most will tell you that they have to work together to be successful with all the challenges listed above. Participants are also acutely aware of how what they are experiencing in the HRE varies from their school science experiences.

Today reiterated these things for me – even in the 95 degree weather, in the middle of the woods these youth willingly learned how to: identify a male and female box turtle, process a recaptured box turtle and enter data into a database. They did these things together, supporting one another. Each student offered input and each person’s input was honored and valued. When they found out that I was there to see how they take up science and that what I learned from my observations might help us better prepare teachers for science teaching, without hesitation they all expressed a desire to see their school science experiences take on more of the HRE-like characteristics.

These youth are the inspiration for this particular blog entry– I want to honor the work and thought that these students have put in this week by giving them a voice! I think they might be onto something here—they’ve inspired me to think about how we might transform school science so that our students have opportunities to do and learn science – even when it is challenging for whatever reason and who can work together sans competition to deal with the challenges. So, in honor of Apache, Bailey, Brandon, Charlie, and Jennifer, below are some initial ideas about how we might begin think about the ways we give our school children access to scientific knowledge and practices.

Broaden our perceptions about what counts as science. There is more to science than the Scientific Method.
We can’t wait to start teaching science until middle school or later. We must do science in elementary school! And I don’t mean read about science, although there is a place for that, it should not be the only access to science that our students in elementary schools have!
Embrace the Framework for 21^st Century Learning and use it to justify making our classes resemble aspects of an HRE. What if we situated our science instruction so that students took on authentic roles of scientists? Might this be a way to open up a world of career opportunities that they never even knew existed?
Talk to our students and really listen to what they wonder about and are interested in and push them to try new things!

Share your thoughts about how else we might think about transforming students’ experiences in school science! What do you think?

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