About Me
My interest in the interaction between art, science and literacy has been an evolution of sorts that began when a collection of milkweed bugs made their way into my fourth-grade classroom. In the fall of 2007, award-winning nonfiction children's book illustrator Bob Marstall spent the day as a visiting artist at Tioughnioga Riverside Academy, the school where I've taught in various capacities for the past 23 years. During Bob's visit, I learned about an online graduate-level course that he co-taught through Montana State University (NTEN) with entomologist Faith Deering. Their course incorporated observation, science and drawing within an inquiry-based framework. I was eager to try out some of their activities in my own classroom, and my students and I were inducted after Bob graciously provided us with a starter-set of milkweed bugs. In the following days, weeks and months, students spent time learning the key skills of organized observation, and they put these skills into practice by studying, observing and drawing their milkweed bugs. With each successive session, I noticed that students' drawings were becoming increasingly detailed and much more accurate, and I began to consider the possible impact that these activities could have on students' expository writing. With this in mind, Bob and I embarked upon our first collaboration, which turned into a second collaboration, which led to our co-teaching an online graduate-level course based on the course that Bob and Faith taught in the early- to mid- 2000s. I'm currently enrolled in the doctoral program in Educational Theory and Practice at Binghamton University, and my dissertation work will further explore the relationship between observation, drawing and writing in the elementary-level classroom.
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