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Young Ocean Voices Speak Out >>

The Power of Youth

A highlight of a teacher and students who are committed to protecting our ocean

Science teacher Amy Gillan (second from right) has met the challenge of getting her seventh-grade students excited about the ocean through fun, hands-on activities.

When Earth Day was first held in 1970, the public's appreciation for how polluted water, disappearing species, habitat destruction and climate change are threatening our planet was still in its infancy. Today our comprehension of these issues has begun to mature as the problems that our planet faces have become more severe. Our sobering awareness of the planet’s troubles is in the hearts and minds of young and old alike. Yet the ocean, which covers 70 percent of our planet, still seems out-of-sight, out-of-mind to most.

For those who don’t live near the ocean, appreciating the threats to it and understanding what to do about them may be difficult. This has been science teacher Amy Gillan’s challenge: how to get her landlocked seventh-graders at Southmont Junior High School in Crawfordsville, Indiana, excited about a sea hundreds of miles away.

“I surveyed the kids and half have never even been to the ocean,” remarked Gillan. “When I first asked them ‘Do you know about ocean life? The physical ocean? Human-ocean connections?,’ I would hear answers like, ‘I like to eat tuna,’ or ‘I’ve been to Florida.’ They just had little understanding of the ocean and its interrelatedness to our planet’s resources,” said Gillan. “Our school standards in Indiana require little coverage of the ocean, and I realized that the levels of ocean literacy were very low.”

“I think they didn’t realize that they impact the ocea [such as] when they wash their car or even buy food from the store,” said Gillan.

Although it did not come easy, Gillan found fun ways to increase her students' knowledge of the ocean and to nurture their curiosity and commitment to protecting the blue parts of our planet.

How are the students responding? “They love it and have been really engaged.”

For example, they conducted an experiment with “blubber gloves” that helped them understand how critical a protective layer of fat is for warm-blooded mammals living in frigid waters to survive. They inserted one hand into a rubber glove filled with vegetable shortening (blubber) and the other remained bare. Then both hands were inserted into a bucket of ice water. The bare hand was freezing within moments, while the ”blubber” hand stayed warm. “It really got the kids to think about how some animals stay warm in cold water.”

Then the students really got into the ocean environment when they conducted an experiment to learn about how marine mammals can submerge for long periods of time. To do this, they tried to act like marine mammals by plunking their heads into buckets of water. Then they took their pulse while submerged and compared this to their pulse readings while breathing air. What they discovered is just like marine mammals, their heartbeats also decreased while underwater, in their case by 10 to 20 beats per minute. This adaptation allows mammals to use less oxygen and stay underwater longer. “It was so much fun. Kids with heads in buckets,” says Gillan.

Gillan recently received a grant to get a coral reef tank and touch tank in her classroom. (The animals were purchased from an aquaculture facility that raises species instead of taking them from the wild.) The students continue to learn about the sea creatures as they care for them.

Also this year, Wyland Foundation sponsored an ocean mural contest nationwide. Each of her five classes painted a huge mural in the hall of their school featuring a creature each student researched and then painted. “Now each time they see a video and see their creature they get excited. They feel ownership,” says Gillan.

These projects are just the beginning. The students are handing out seafood advisory cards and asking their parents to buy or not buy certain food because of its impact on the ocean.

“The ocean is inherently interesting to kids,” says Gillan. "It sort of grabs their attention."

Not only are her students enriching their learning experience, so is Gillan. She has been teaching for 26 years, but she knew little about the ocean until only a few years ago. “Being landlocked, I too was not educated on ocean matters,” says Gillan.

Fortunately in recent years, the number of ocean enrichment and curriculum development workshops for teachers has grown significantly. The National Marine Educators Association among others has been key to this success.

One teaching guide that Gillan recommends is “Ocean Literacy: The Essential Principles of Ocean Science K–12.” Its principles are:

• The Earth has one big ocean with many features.
• The ocean and life in the ocean shape the features of the Earth.
• The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate.
• The ocean makes Earth habitable.
• The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems.
• The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected.
• The ocean is largely unexplored.

Gillan has also taken many teacher education workshops as well as visited several aquariums, including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Shedd Aquarium and Georgia Aquarium.

Now Gillan is working on her doctorate from Purdue University in science curriculum and instruction, focusing on ocean literacy and stewardship. Gillan says, “I want to make a difference in how science is taught and what science content is emphasized in our nation, in light of the urgency for a scientifically literate society to make sound decisions.”

Young Ocean Voices Speak Out

Colleen, 13, is an eighth grader at Bancroft Middle School in California. She recently spoke to her class about how overfishing can damage marine environments and the dangers of eating fish that contain pollutants. This year, it was brought to my attention that our oceans were getting more polluted each and every day. I grew up by the ocean, and could never imagine losing the ocean that means so much to me. I decided to construct a PowerPoint slideshow to present to my class that would raise awareness not only of pollution but also overfishing. Doing this project just taught me so much more about how this polluting is happening and how we are dealing with it. The truth is though some people are trying to stop this and help the oceans, most of the population isn’t even aware this is happening. My goal is to raise awareness that this is really happening and we need to take action. —Colleen

Patrick is a 13-year-old seventh grader at Southmont Junior High School in Indiana. Even though he lives far from a coast, he has a strong passion for protecting and learning more about the ocean. I like all creatures, and I think they deserve respect and we should not pollute [their environment]. When I was 8 or 9, I started learning about the ocean and about sharks. I really like [sharks], but they are going extinct. People are catching them just for fun and to cut off their fins to make soup. I tell my parents to not buy seafood that has been fished by dragging nets or harsh fishing [methods]. What I like about the ocean is that there are lots of fish that no one has discovered. I like learning about them. For my career, I want to learn more about the ocean to help people know that you should not pollute and should not kill sharks. —Patrick