Island Girl
After a life-changing summer internship, Hollings Scholar Anna Cajiga returns inspired to teach science in the inner city
By Andrea Billups

Making science come alive for students is often difficult, even for experienced educators. College of Education senior Anna Cajiga says an internship this past summer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) showed her how to teach about the sea, even in schools located far from the bright blue waves and sandy shores.

Cajiga, an Ernest F. Hollings scholar, worked at the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., for three months, helping create content for an interactive and instructional Web site, www.oceanslive.org . There, teachers can download lesson plans about the world’s oceans, water and land conservation, maritime history—even view a live action camera that shows real-time footage of the Monterey Bay, with the occasional sea lion swimming by.

“The ocean affects all of us, even if you aren’t living in a coastal area,” says Cajiga, 21, an elementary education major from Penfield, N.Y. “But environmental and ocean education is really lacking in k–12 schools.”

That’s something she hopes to change. After a summer spent visiting the different islands in the chain, watching children complete a sandy beach monitoring project and observing scientists doing marine investigations, Cajiga, who also spent time at the Long Beach Aquarium and at an ocean literacy conference, says she’s inspired to incorporate the drama of nature into her lesson plans, particularly in those classes taught in the inner city, where few children get the opportunity to frolic in the surf and feel the saltwater sting.

“I’m so interested in science, but I was intimidated by it because as a child, I was raised with the idea that math and science are hard and something that I can’t understand,” she says candidly. “I want my kids to see science as everything around them. It’s an integral part of their life and they need to understand. As I am preparing to be a teacher, I wanted to seek out opportunities like this. I think this has improved my ability to teach these subjects in the classroom.”

Cajiga rented a room in a Santa Barbara house and spent a summer doing “a lot of walking,” because she didn’t bring a car. She worked online, finding valuable Internet research related to ocean education and, after screening it for quality, linked it as content to the OceansLive Web site so others could have a more comprehensive bounty of information about the seas.

The Web site features a teacher portal with lesson plans linked to the national science education standards. She thinks this link is valuable as teachers try to focus on content that is assessed.

“One of the things I learned is the reason that ocean education is not taught in the classroom is teachers have to worry about standardized testing and they see environmental education as one more thing they have to teach,” she says. “What a lot of organizations want to do is link this content with what needs to be taught. For example, teachers could teach photosynthesis but instead of talking about trees, they could talk about algae in the ocean, which produces more oxygen than all of the trees in the world. So often, that is not touched on in the classroom.”

She hopes others will take a look at the Web site and begin to incorporate ocean and environmental themes to teach lessons that have to be covered.

The study tools “are linked to the concepts of ocean literacy, seven main ideas that ideally every person in the U.S. would understand,” she said of the lesson plans. Teachers in the NOAA project, she adds, have been working to align the different programs put on by the marine sanctuary, one of 14 nationwide, with the content standards that need to be taught around the nation.

Cajiga, who serves as president of the MSU chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, the education honors society, says she can’t wait to use what she learned in her own classroom after she graduates in May 2007.

“I think now I am more prepared to teach interdisciplinary units,” she says, noting her parents can already see her confidence and professionalism growing after a summer of study far away from Michigan.

“I want to teach in an inner city, a more urban environment. There is definitely a void there for this kind of stuff in city schools. But there are so many cultural resources in a city. I think it would be extremely rewarding,” she says proudly.

“One of the speakers at the conference I attended said inner-city kids often don’t get to experience nature firsthand, and some of them who live only miles away have never even seen the ocean,” she said. “I would love to do an afterschool project and start a nonprofit one day that focuses on getting kids outside of the classroom for education experiences that are hands-on in nature. To see them get their hands dirty and develop their curiosity so they would be interested in science. This internship has inspired me and I want to inspire them, too.”

The Lesson

Anna’s Ocean Literacy Quiz

1. What percentage of the Earth does the ocean cover?
   A: 70 percent. All of this water is really just one big ocean with many ocean basins, such as the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian and Arctic.
    

2. What percentage of the earth’s water is in the oceans?
   A: 97 percent of Earth’s water is in the ocean. The water in the ocean is connected to all of the earth’s water reservoirs through the evaporation and precipitation processes.
    

3. Where does most of the oxygen on Earth come from?
   A: Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere originally came from the activities of photosynthetic organisms in the ocean. (For example, from kelp forests that are found off the coast of California.)
    

4. What is the leading source of marine pollution?
   A: Pollution running off the land is the leading source of marine pollution. In fact, oil running off of our streets and driveways eventually flows into the oceans and amounts to about 10.9 million gallons every eight months.
    

5. How many jobs in the United States are marine-related?
   A: One in every six jobs is marine-related. In 2000, 75 percent of the U.S. gross national product was produced in coastal states!
    

6. Is the diversity of organisms greater in the ocean or on land?
   A: In the ocean. The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems — some major groups of organisms are only found in the ocean.
    

7. How much of the ocean has been explored?
   A: Less than 5 percent of the ocean has been explored, making it the great frontier for the next generation’s explorers and researchers.
    

8. True or False: We are dependent on the ocean.
   A: True. Not only does the ocean supply us with freshwater, moderate the climate and influence the weather, but it also provides us with mineral and energy resources, food, and important medicines. Without the ocean, there would not be life on this planet.
    

9. True or False: The resources found in the ocean will last forever.
   A: False. Although the ocean is large, it is finite and the resources are limited. That is one major reason why ocean conservation is so important.
    

10. What is ocean literacy?
    A: Ocean literacy is an understanding of the ocean’s influence on you and your influence on the ocean. By becoming an ocean literate citizen, you can be better prepared to help make a difference in the future of our planet!