Retired teachers send Turlock kids on science field trip to Monterey

The dream of a retired California State University, Stanislaus, biology professor to send every Turlock schoolchild to see the ocean and learn about sea life is at least partially coming true. Donations from retired educators will send 15 classes from five schools to Monterey this school year.

The kids see the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s floating jellyfish, deep-sea exhibits and touchable tidepool tables. In the second part of the trip, they head to the beach to count sand crabs as part of a scientific survey. Videos show kids digging sand and measuring the skittish little crabs with calipers between shrieks and laughs as tiny waves splash their ankles.

“It’s a really wonderful investment,” said retired Modesto Junior College professor Richard Anderson, who with wife Lynn Hansen helped start the field trips. With free admission from Monterey Bay Aquarium, free training and a beach science project through the nonprofit LiMPETS, and parent and community chaperones donating their time, Anderson figures he gets about $7,600 worth of bang for every 1,200 bucks he donates.

Donations to cover busing, the out-of-pocket cost of the trips, have come from friends of retired professor Pam Roe, who for years took her biology classes to Monterey for tide-pool monitoring.

“When Pam Roe retired from Stan State, she said she wanted to send every child in Turlock to the ocean,” Anderson said Friday. “I decided to help her make it happen.”

The first groups, fifth-graders from Walnut Elementary in the north of Turlock and sixth-graders from Wakefield Elementary in the south, went in 2013. This school year, the word got out. Two classes from Walnut, four classes from Wakefield, three from Cunningham Elementary, four from Medeiros Elementary and two from Turlock Junior High will be going.

Donors dug deeper into their pockets and the five schools ponied up $200 each to send their students. Each trip costs $1,200 to $1,500 per bus. Also pitching in is the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History’s LiMPETS, which stands for Long-term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students.

The students follow a 50-meter line from the tide line up the beach, digging up large pipe loads of sand they filter to find the sand crabs. Many of the kids never have been to a beach before. Likely none ever have been part of a scientific survey of wildlife.

“I’ve not seen a program that puts real science data collection into the hands of fifth-graders until LiMPETS came into our classrooms,” said Walnut fifth-grade teacher Bret Sutterley. “The opportunity for students to research in class, then go into the field – or beach, that is – to actually collect and record data is incredible for students.”

“It matters for Valley students to experience the world around them and to be aware of man’s impact on the environment,” he said. Teaching kids about the ocean through books and experiments is good, he said, but doing science with sand squishing between their toes changes how they see the world.

“It just makes it real for them,” said teacher Dave Sutton, who team-teaches science with Sutterley at Walnut.

Student counts of crab populations become part of a large database consulted by resource agencies and used by scientists doing long-term studies of intertidal ecosystems, Anderson said.

Hansen, also a retired Modesto Junior College professor, says in a Walnut school video that she sees a real need for area children to see and touch the world around them. “I’ve been a volunteer in elementary education since I retired, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that students can tell you about the rain forest. Students can tell you about the coral reef. Students can tell you about polar bears and penguins. But they don’t know anything about what’s in their immediate environment,” Hansen said.

This story was originally published November 16, 2014 at 7:18 PM with the headline "Retired teachers send Turlock kids on science field trip to Monterey."