Bees and Bears and Kids, Oh My!
Skype-a-Scientist with Defenders
On March 19th, I got to do something that I haven’t done in a long time: talk with kids about science! Through a great program called Skype-a-Scientist, created by a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, about 30 sixth-graders and I Skyped about science, the conservation of bees and bears, and renewable energy and buildings. It was a great, engaging discussion that I hope inspired them; it certainly inspired me.
Out west of Chicago, Miss Thill’s class of sixth-graders has been learning about conservation in one of their science course modules. Her teaching and their curiosity got the student’s minds primed to think like scientists, which made my job quite easy. First off, we talked about who among them can be scientists, which has the obvious answer, “Everyone!” We then talked about what science is: the process of trying to figure out how the world works. This is really important: we can’t just pretend to know how the world works if we want to make it better, we have to understand the real world. Science is essential to doing that, and the centrality of science to Defenders’ work is one of the most important reasons why I work here.
After we talked about the basics of science, the conversation turned to conservation. The students had over a dozen questions that they had come up with based on their classes and looking at Defenders’ website. They asked about the importance of bees and other pollinators, even making the link to the dependence of our well-being on pollinators not going extinct. They asked about the rarest animals, so we talked about species that are found only in one tiny place on Earth, like the iridescent blue Devil’s Hole pupfish, and one of the rarest mammals, the Amur leopard. They asked about jaguars and grizzly bears, and why birds and bats don’t just avoid wind turbines (those blades are whizzing by really, really fast). And they even asked how much of Defenders’ revenue goes to conservation…I don’t know what spurred that question, but the answer is 96%, for the record.
How many of Miss Thill’s students will grow up to be conservation scientists that directly work on saving species? How many will be artists whose exposure to science and conservation informs their creative works that inspire others to care? And how many will go on to entirely different endeavors, but think of the plants and animals in their day-to-day lives? I don’t know…I hope every single one of them. Whatever the number, it is surely higher because of programs like Skype-a-Scientist, which inspire and inform the next generation of scientists, conservationists and citizens. I’m glad I took part, and encourage others — from the science side or the teaching side — to dive in.
-Jacob
