Sarah Mitch<\/a>, appealed to Parsley as a student with many interests and an unclear path for the future. \u201cI just like learning about everything, animals especially\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\u201cSquid, grasshopper, and worm dissections were fun for the non-squeamish students,\u201d says Parsley, who doesn\u2019t count herself in the \u201cnon-squeamish category. \u201cAlmost every student in the class used their tools to pull out select organs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Parsley chose to do a recent project on the pig nose turtle in watercolor storybook form because it \u201callowed me to come up with a goofy story and exercise my creativity, which I love to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She learned, she says, that pig nosed turtles don\u2019t experience loneliness, only lack of resources when they are separated from parents at birth. \u201cI chose to make Morty the Pig Nosed Turtle a sarcastic and very tell-it-like-it-is type of guy,\u201d she explains. \u201cThe book tells the story of him meeting a pig on land for the first time and his crisis that follows.\u201d<\/p>\n
The class is designed to be hands-on and experiential, says Mitch. \u201cThe hope is that students can experience learning as something that is fun, relaxed, and organic.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s COVID-inspired block schedule \u2014 four 75-minute periods per day \u2014 provided the \u201cluxury\u201d of building in a weekly field experience to the class that connected with what the group was studying in the classroom,\u00a0 explained Mitch.<\/p>\n
The class of 14 students in grades 10 to and 12\u00a0has visited a local farm to meet with farmers and see goats, pigs, and chickens; a pet store; Blue Ridge Community College to learn about the Vet Tech Program; and Silver Lake in Dayton, Va., to fish.<\/p>\n
An upcoming fieldtrip will take the group to the Harrisonburg-Rockingham SPCA to volunteer. The class will culminate in a \u201ccritical look\u201d at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a teacher, I feel fortunate to have the flexibility to design electives that can be outside of the box, placing an emphasis on learning for fun,\u201d says Mitch.\u00a0 \u201cIt has been great to build the class community \u2014 with students who have varied interests \u2014 and to see the students dive in deep.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Art and science came together in a zoology class project for Claire Parsley \u201922, resulting in her water color-illustrated book, \u201cHow the Pig-Nosed Turtle Came to Be.\u201d The new zoology elective, taught by Sarah Mitch, appealed to Parsley as a student with many interests and an unclear path for the future. \u201cI just like learning\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":47912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[133,339,19],"class_list":["post-47729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","tag-emhs","tag-steam","tag-stem"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.easternmennonite.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47729"}],"curies":[{"name":"gracias","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}