On trainers and teaching, Part VI, what walls? (11/25/2015)

It is always interesting to see that when you start something it has unforeseen consequences, in particular when they are positive.  Call it serendipity or coincidence, but it is often not the intent.  In my case, it brought down a few walls, or boundaries.

So what am I talking about?  As I recently mentioned in a post I was developing a course on wetlands and how it relates to stormwater and erosion and sediment control.  We felt there was a tremendous need for a class like this, since we always talk about wetlands in our classes and the need to avoid impacting them.  We felt that I was the person to do this because I have worked as a wetland scientist throughout the U.S.A. since the early 1990-s.  Well, we have rolled out the class and given it at two locations.  The class has been well received and the evaluations are great.  Both the materials and the teacher (me) are well liked.  So there is something to say for being multifarious, a jack of all trades, it helps in thinking things through in developing a class and standing in front of a room and talking about a subject.  I discussed that in this post as well.

A tidal salt marsh in a creek that is a tributary to the York River.  Tidal marshes are really interesting, to the eye they may seem fairly uniform and only occupied by a single species.  But this is far from the truth.  During high tide they are teaming with small (young fish) and at low tide they have fiddler crabs and other critters.  The plant species in them have a very narrow tollerance range of water (tidal) depth.  It is a really neat system.

Why then the unforeseen consequences?  That for a big part may have to do with my personality.  While I love to teach and be in front of a class; I hate to practice, do dry runs of my classes, tell people how it goes, what I am doing, you know it.  I find it difficult to develop outlines of what I am doing or how the class will go (a waste of time almost, I rather be developing the class or think about it).  For me developing a class is an organic I start out with a few ideas and things go from there I put things before it and behind it, wherever it makes sense in my eyes; I brood.  This can be infuriating to my supervisor, although he has learned to live with it and understands it.  However, you can imagine that people who do not know my style and more vested in the subject matter can get concerned when they experience my style first hand.  I do not like to rehearse my classes, and when I do, I find it difficult to treat a group of my colleagues, who I assume know as much as I do of the subject, as the students I am supposed to teach and know very little.  It feels like I am talking down to them and that is something I cannot do.  I like to talk to people at their level, which is probably why people rate me so high as a teacher (am I too arrogant here? I really don't like talking down to people, unless I don't like them, then I talk down to them like the best of them!).  Moreover, I do not rehearse my classes.  As I tell my students in the first class: “You guys are the dress rehearsal and the main event all at the same time!” 

During the development of the class I’ve felt two or three times that the class would be cancelled because of the sensitive issues that wetlands raise in this country.  We understand more and more about their importance as an ecosystem and habitat that needs to be protected, and for that matter the push back that conservationists have had in the past from the development and home building community.  So it is logical that this class was under somewhat of a microscope to start with.  Moreover, people are protective of their own turf, so it is difficult to have an outsider like me teach a subject that another group in our department is responsible for; they are the experts and they had no idea what my level of expertise was or what my teaching style was.  On top of that was my style of course design and development (in other words don't do as I do when you do course design) and my marginal ability to articulate it.

However, I can report all is well and I have received compliments from the group that considered asking us to cancel the classes and we received an offer from them to co-teach the class with me, the greatest compliment I can get.  I consider it a breaking down of a virtual wall between groups that is there whether you want to admit there is a wall or not.

But one thing is for sure you never get to tear down walls or get these neat unforeseen consequences if you don't try!

And yes, I need to really try to be more transparent in my course design, I guess.

York River (1/16/2015)

The York River is very interesting, it is only named the York when the Pamunkey and the Mattaponi come together at West Point.  At this point it becomes a very wide river.  The river has fairly steep slopes and except for some neighborhoods it is fairly undeveloped until you get to Yorktown.  Before Yorktown you have three areas that are owned by the Federal Government and you see signs on shore that tell you to stay away from these areas, or else!  Another stretch of the south shore of the river is a state park (York River State Park).  That's where we visited today.  The photo below was taken from the visitor's center, looking towards the northwest.

These facilities have a kayak launch and you can also rent kayaks if you don't have your own.  There is a great creek that runs through the marsh you can see below.  It has some fun wildlife, in particular a huge population of fiddler crabs.  Today we hiked along the marsh and saw a number of birds including two soaring bald eagles.  The north and west facing slopes of these marshes are spectacular.  I absolutely love the ecology of the area.  It still amazes me to see pretty darn big trees in this area and a dense understory of mountain laurel (yes they do grow here on the coastal plains).  The photograph below was taken near one of the bird watching platforms in the creek (yes this is a great bird watching area).

I assume that the park is across an area where the native American population lives that became a Disney legend. Archaeologists and historians place Pocahontas' village on north shore of the York. How's that for historical significance.  I guess that's why there was this thing in the local newspaper today telling us that some citizens are trying to get an historic and ecological significance designation for the river.  Hopefully this will be successful.

Yorktown (9/14/2014)

Sunday was a great day for a bike ride, the temperatures were mild, and the breeze was not too bad.  It was a great day for a training ride to get ready for the century ride we are doing at the end of the month.  After the ride it showed that we had gone 35 mile.

The ride was fairly uneventful, but at one point we had a motorcycle come by and right when he came by he put on the "after burners."  It was deafening and we were not sure if the guy did it on purpose or if we was just inconsiderate.  A little later a couple on bicycles wanted to pass and in good biking fashion they yelled " passing on your left." Actually we just coming to an intersection where we had to stop because a car was coming that had the right of way.  My wife said something like "go ahead, if you want to die", which was exactly what I thought.  They passed us after the car came through the intersection; we already had 28 miles in our legs, so we gladly let them go. It was a good ride, but it would be so nice to have bicycle paths or a wider, trash-free shoulder. 

This photo was taken at a rest point.  We love to stop at the end of Bay Tree Beach Road.  Bay Tree Beach appears to be an island that is connected to the mainland by a road.  The island has a tidal marsh between it and the shore.  On the northeast side of island is the Chesapeake Bay. There are a few valuable homes built along the beach, and it would be fun living there were it not for Northeasters or hurricanes.  I visited one of the homes once as member of the wetland board, and their bottom floor was a two car garage with garage doors on all sides.  When it storms they can open all the doors and save their home that way.  Water just flows through the garage.  This photo was taken of the marsh, looking southwest.  It is a nice place, you can almost always see a bald eagle, osprey or other critters there.  You sometimes have to zig-zag around the fiddler crabs when the water is high.  A great place and a great ride indeed.

Seaford (8/17/2014)

It was a very quiet Sunday morning when I went to the boat to prepare it to receive a coat of nonskid paint in the cockpit.  I took this picture at 10 in the morning.  I was the only one there, and there were even very few people at the public boat launch in the far back of the photograph.

Typing the word cockpit makes me all the sudden realize that airplanes also have cockpits.  Interestingly the dictionary says its origin is from an enclosed area where they had cock fights.  It goes on and says it is also the name of the quarters of warships where the junior officers are housed.  A very interesting juxtaposition here.  On small water crafts like sailboats and smaller motorboats the word “pit” in the word cockpit sounds more true to its meaning; it is a well where you stand in and do most of the boating and having a nonskid floor is important. 

Oh well.  An egret was standing on the dock, peering down, probably looking for a juicy morsel like a small crab or small fish.  At low tide (which it was) the mud flats are often overtaken by fiddler crabs.  Neat little animals; the males have one huge claw and one that is the normal size.  Females have equal size claws.  Makes you wonder if size matters in this part of the animal kingdom as well.  There are so many ways of being attractive to the opposite sex in the animal kingdom; it is amazing.  Even in our own species, the humans, different cultures have different (physical) things they look at to judge whether that person makes a good mate.  It is absolutely fascinating what evolution did to further a species and facilitates selecting mates that would make my offspring more successful than yours.  That’s what Darwin called “Natural Selection” and “Survival of the Fittest.”  Guess that is also why we called out boat the "Beagle."

Anyway, there had been heavy dew fall, and after drying the boat and waiting some time, I had a successful day getting the nonskid paint down.  It is now safer down there; it looks better and hopefully less sensitive to water getting into the core of the boat.