THE GOOD, BAD, AND UGLY OF TEACHING EARTH SCIENCE IN HIGH SCHOOL

Earth Science has been the best thing that ever happened to my teaching career. It is filled with activities and everyday experiences that allow me to take the students outside to do inquiry-based/hands-on activities. The curriculum has four major topics that blend well together when doing field work. I have the students do a year long research project on water quality. They test their local drinking water and the nearby river and learn about soils, rivers, weather and astronomy while determing if the river is suitable to drink. Earth science is not only filled with wonderful activities but also lots of field trips and opportunities to bring in adults in many different career fields. This is the good side allowing students to learn about everyday life and our Planet Earth.

With the new Earth Science graduating requirement in North Carolina teachers are going into the classroom teaching subject matter they were not trained to teach. They feel threatened and inadequate. We need workshops in all four areas of Earth Science especially geology. No one likes change and when teachers are uncomfortable with the material they tend to hate the subject and have a bad attitude. We need the help of the geologists to keep Earth Science in the classroom and make it the favorite subject of the students. The ugly is that some districts are putting this new requirement in the 8th grade so that they can still have the subjects they had before in H.S. Others are teaching Earth Science in the 9th grade because there is no EOC and students will have time to mature. With attitudes like this what is the future of "Earth Science" in the high school?