A KAYAK BASED PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP – BUILDING KNOWLEDGE AND CAMARADERIE ON A DAY LONG RIVER TRIP

An impromptu conversation between the author and a USGS geologist at a recent GSA Map Blast session led to the design and presentation of a professional development field trip for middle and high school earth science teachers (http://www.bedford.k12.ny.us/flhs/science/stevek/omni/cameronsline/. The field study area is a complex assemblage of deformed, faulted, and metamorphosed rocks of the Hudson Highlands and the southern section of the New England Uplands dissected by the Housatonic River. Cameron's Line (a major Ordovician thrust fault that marks the suture between the continental rocks of ancestral North America and the oceanic rocks metamorphosed as they were thrust eastward during the closing of the Iapetus Ocean during the Taconic Orogeny) strikes roughly north across the study area, and aspects of the fault and surrounding geology are best observed and easily accessed from the Housatonic River. This poster reviews the rationale for such a field experience, the geologic aspects explored, and the logistics of efficiently getting a fleet of inexperienced paddlers on the water. The first running of the activity occurred in early June of 2004, and plans are underway for the trip's inclusion into broader professional development programs at Purchase College SUNY and the Putnam/Northern Westchester B.O.C.E.S.