Throw Away the Trash

Enviroman and friends remind us that we need to "Throw Away the Trash" if we want a clean home, classroom, and planet. C'mon everybody! Throw away the trash!

Earth Science Rocks!

I have always been a big fan of this planet of ours - the third rock from the sun, our terrestrial home, our mother, our Earth. How could I or any other Earthling not be a fan? Both the biotic and abiotic worlds are flat-out fascinating. I am captivated by the planet's processes; the diversity of plants, animals, and geology; the connections between flora and fauna; and the complexity and majesty of structures that exist on land, in the skies, and under the waters. These fascinations formed by nature's wonders have called mankind to the great outdoors. Luminaries from John Muir to Ansel Adams to Henry David Thoreau embraced the wilds and tickled our imagination. Galileo Galilei, Sir Francis Bacon, Xenophanes, Charles Darwin, Alfred Wegener, and countless others turned their wonderment and scientific methods into wells of knowledge about the night sky, the world's coastlines, living creatures, and the evidence of creatures once living.

There's a certain amount of romance that goes into the study and appreciation of Earth. As we dig further into the fossil record, we learn more of our past. As we scale the face of a rocky mountain, we hug the evidence of geologic upheaval, a violence that has been silenced as it settled. As we skip a rock across a lake, we set off a ripple effect that has been repeated countless times in every ocean, sea, lake, stream, and backyard puddle. As we gaze across the ocean, waiting for the glowing sun to dip below the Pacific's horizon, we turn our thoughts to a new day dawning on the other side of the planet. Romance looms in the wings of a fluttering butterfly, the rolling of wave trains, the glowing flow of Hawaiian lava, the morning dew on the petal of a rose, the birth of a foal, and the aerial ballet of a bird riding a wind. Captivating. Profound. Mysterious. Earth.

As a child, I found great appreciation and interest in spending time on the beaches of Malibu and Santa Monica. I started a collection of shells and rocks, finding samples on the seashore and the expanse of the high desert. I embraced nature photography under the watchful eye of my father. I spent more time outdoors than in (and still do when not in the classroom or edit bay). I questioned the ground shaking under my Californian feet. I recognized a love of animals, eventually joining 4H and later becoming a veterinary assistant. With this type of history and ongoing interest, I salivated at the opportunity to teach Earth Science.

This has been my first year teaching Earth Science in 6th Grade, and I have relished the time spent on each lesson and concept. What a year of discovery it has been for our students and myself. We have learned and renewed our knowledge of the Earth as a living laboratory. This has been a year of major earthquakes (Haiti, Chile, and others), tremendous volcanoes (Iceland), and homecomings (field trip to Vasquez Rocks County Park which sits a stone's throw from my parents home in Agua Dulce). I have shared photos of my Vancouver Olympics' trip to the great northwest, giving the students a glimpse of Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier from my rental car's window. I have utilized the San Gabriel mountains, burned bare by last year's Station Fire, to illustrate erosion and mountain formations. I have shared David Herndon's images of the quake destruction in Haiti to illustrate the destructive forces of plate tectonics. I have even used my cellphone to capture images of marine fossils discovered on a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains. I love this stuff!

I am an avid hiker (who wishes he had more time and trails) and find great satisfaction in breaking a sweat as though it meant breaking bread with Mother Nature. My good friend, Scott Olson, and I like to hit the local trails each spring and summer. We have found the Santa Monica Mountains to be a fair challenge and a scenic sensation. On a recent romp up Backbone Trail, a relatively oft-traversed trail off of Malibu Canyon Road, I became giddy when I discovered a handful of marine fossils atop the mountain range. Scott could only sit back and chuckle as I snapped BlackBerry pictures and picked up a few samples of what appear to be spiral shell fossils (Mesalia Clarke Gastropoda) which probably enjoyed life more than 50 million years ago. I recently explained to our students that the top of Mt. Everest in the Himalayas used to be under the sea, as evidenced by the limestone layers atop Everest. Now, here I was in the Santa Monicas thinking that I was a modern-day Xenophanes. In 500 B.C., the Grecian discovered fossilized sea creatures on mountains and reasoned that the area must have once been submerged under the sea. In 2010, I got the same kind of rush of discovery.

Man, Earth Science rocks!

2010 Revlon Run/Walk for Women

Join me this weekend as thousands of Angelenos and I Discover our Womentum! At school in the past two weeks, we have experienced the C-word hitting home, and we have all been touched by this terrible disease through our interconnectedness with family and friends. Join me on Saturday, May 8. Join me to raise funds for research and treatment. Join me to raise awareness. Join me to stand together. Join me.