There’s a particular kind of relief that comes with the first week of school. After a summer of juggling program schedules that seemed to reinvent themselves daily, walking back into a classroom with a set bell schedule and a plan for the day felt like exhaling for the first time in months. Summer is wonderful, …
Mid-July. I’m in the middle of a billion summer camps and writing my research proposal for my dissertation. I find out that I’m moving classrooms…..Maybe… I could either suck it up and start the move now, or, wait until literally the first week of school. Uh, no. I’ll just move I guess. Five years. Five …
A week inside COASTWISE 2026 — where students built real instruments, collected real data, and asked real questions about the coastline they call home. On a Monday morning in late July, sixteen students filed into Building 25a at State College of Florida in Bradenton and sat down in front of tables scattered with small cardboard …
I just got back from the National Marine Educators Association (NMEA) 2026 conference, and I’m still buzzing from a week packed with new ideas, old friends, and a lot of blue crab. Here’s a look at what I got up to. Getting Hands-On with Field Collection I presented a session on field collection methods, then …
If you’ve spent any time looking for ocean-themed lessons online, you already know the problem. On one end, you find beautiful, cartoon-bright resources that mention sharks and coral reefs but don’t actually teach students how scientists work. On the other end, you find real science — actual research papers, tagging datasets, taxonomic keys — that …
Every summer, Oceanography Camp for Girls (OCG) brings together dozens of young women for three intensive weeks of hands-on marine science at the University of South Florida. This year I once again had the privilege of serving as a science mentor across all three weeks — seining in the field, leading lab rotations, running ecosystem …
There is a particular kind of professional recalibration that happens when a science teacher steps onto a research vessel. Not the novelty of it — after a while, the gear becomes familiar, the salt air becomes background — but the thinking it demands. Being on the water with real instruments, real data, and real organisms forces you to reconnect with science as a process rather than a product, …
This World Oceans Day, I had the privilege to once again join Manatee County Natural Resources for a community celebration that brought together nearly 500 people who care about our local waterways. The energy was contagious! Families, kids, curious adults, and fellow ocean advocates all gathered in one place to learn, connect, and celebrate the …
On May 18, 2026, a small sea turtle crawled up onto Jupiter Beach in Palm Beach County and did something that, as far as researchers know, has never happened before in recorded history: she nested in Florida. Her name is Tini, and she’s an olive ridley sea turtle — a species that, until now, had …
Every year, as the final days of school wind down and the energy in the building shifts into that particular end-of-May chaos of finals, I do something that might look like I’m taking it easy: I put on Finding Nemo. But if you’ve sat in my classroom for a full year of marine science, you know …