The visit by the Open High School students was just the first in what figures to be a series of community outreach efforts tied to the rock pool research. Vonesh hopes to engage with more groups and more students about the life of the rock pools. In fact, VCU students returned to Open in December for classroom lessons related to the ecology of the pools.

Anne Wright, director of outreach education for the VCU Rice Rivers Center, and Vonesh already have collaborated with Richmond city and area scientists and teachers to create a collection of innovative instructional materials available via the web and smartphone that highlight the rock pool system. The NSF grant will help fund new educational videos and teacher training materials. Vonesh and Wright also have plans for an interactive tour of the rock pools.

Betts said the Open trip to the pools was a revelation for her students in multiple ways. Not only did the visual cues they saw on the rocks help crystallize previous lessons on topics such as food webs and photosynthesis but the exposure to a collection of diligent and intelligent college kids offered another form of instruction.

As an example, Betts pointed to VCU student Rainey Dale, who taught the Open students about nearby plant life. “She was so excited to teach them about the trees that the kids just fed off of that,” Betts said.

“For some of them, college seems like an enigma,” she said. “They don’t know what they don’t know. So seeing what a college class could look like was an important experience for them. Also, they enjoyed it 10 times more than they would have if it had been me or another teacher out there.”

Louque said the experience of teaching high school students also helped bolster the lessons she and her classmates had learned, while in some cases deepening their existing knowledge. She noted they had to be prepared to make a thorough presentation — “students know when you don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said — and answer any probing questions.

“High school students these days are brutally honest so it made me kind of nervous,” Louque said. “It made me study my stuff more because I didn’t want to sound silly.”

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