A NEW, RELEVANT INTRODUCTORY GEOLOGY LAB COURSE FOR INDIANA'S FUTURE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS

Possibly the most important key to engaging K-6 students in the geosciences lies in first engaging their teachers. At Saint Joseph's College the majority (>60%) of students enrolled in our introductory Environmental Geology course are elementary education majors seeking to fulfill a requirement for a science course with lab. The remaining students are majors in various scientific disciplines with minors in secondary education; environmental science majors or minors; or undeclared. Given the large number of future educators in this group, and that Environmental Geology might be the most rigorous science course that many of them take, we felt it important to maximize their exposure to important concrete geologic concepts, to do so in such a way that the relevance to their lives is inherently obvious, and all the while keep them interested, engaged, and occasionally entertained, by the subject matter. Since the majority of Saint Joseph's College students are from Indiana or adjacent counties in Illinois, and will likely remain in Indiana following graduation, we designed and implemented a new lab course focusing specifically on the geology of Indiana. This course is divided into several units in which successive labs build on skills and concepts developed in earlier exercises. Following an introductory lab on geologic time, students develop identification and classification skills by studying fossils and minerals; students complete the unit by making their own rock collections with specimens collected from a local outwash deposit. The second unit uses a wide variety of maps to help students understand the nature of Indiana's physiography and bedrock geology. The final unit requires students to synthesize information to interpret more complex phenomena, including weathering, surface water dynamics, groundwater flow, and continental glaciation. While the topics presented are by no means unique to Indiana, the examples presented are, emphasizing to the students that geology is relevant to their lives. Because of the emphasis on local geologic phenomena, several lab sessions are held outdoors (much to the delight of most students). Additionally, because most of the exercises use readily available, inexpensive materials, many of them can be easily adapted for use in the elementary classroom.