High 60. Sunny.
What took Oregon State University so long to post the headline that Jane Lubenchenko was going to head NOAA? That’s the question on my mind this morning. That’s old news, OSU!
In Western Massachusetts the air has turned warm. The snow has completely melted from my shaded backyard, and I am starting to see my herbs poke their green heads out of the mulch. Spring has arrived, and after the long, hard winter we’ve had, it had better be here for good. I will protest an April snow storm! It’s happened before.
I have not posted in a while because it has been a busy semester! Truth be told, I knew it would be busy, and now that it’s almost over I can’t tell where the time went. Teaching General Zoology for the first time has kept me busy day and night-creating new lectures, tests, assignments and grading these and all new lab reports!
I’ve been learning so much through this experience. Of course, I am delving into the Animal kingdom much deeper than I ever have before, and I am building so many new schemas to relate my old knowledge to the new knowledge. I can practically feel the neurons firing new pathways! I am also learning more about teaching, and particularly about how to teach the Animal kingdom. I won’t get into the details here, but my students have given me some very useful feedback about how they are learning. And to top it all off, I’ve come up with a service-learning project for the course-salmon stocking with Mass Fish and Wildlife. Busy, busy!
And speaking of Zoology, I have to go teach. Today we are covering the Phylum Platyhelminthes-the Flatworms. I’m looking forward to this one!
New England Naturalist 