Tag Archives: biology

WIK12 Blog Tour: Meet Jodi Wheeler-Toppen!

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It’s such a pleasure for me to introduce Jodi Wheeler-Toppen, the science teacher I wish everyone could have! You’ll understand when you meet her at WIK12 where she will be on the faculty sharing her love of teaching and writing. Go HERE to make plans to attend.

Don’t forget to ask Jodi about rockets, explosions, gushers, shooters and blobs – or you could just go to her website, www.onceuponascience book.com and read about her books. Our conversation is a preview of the excitement Jodi generates.

Jodi Wheeler-Toppen

Jodi, when did you first become fascinated with all things “science?” What area(s) of science were most compelling for you?

You know, it’s funny. I didn’t even like science until high school biology. I think I hadn’t had very good teachers. I only read fiction, and I went off to college planning on being an English major. Then I took a great zoology course my freshman year, and eventually even got fascinated with chemistry. I ended up a high school biology teacher, myself.

What sort of childhood did you have? Did you live in a city, the country, or what was your environment like?

I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, which is a great place to enjoy nature. My high school biology teacher passed on her love of the salt marshes, and all the wonderful life inside. I still long for that pungent, salty smell as I drive around Atlanta.

Besides your biology teacher, were there other adults, a family member, or particular books that had an influence upon you?

My high school biology teacher, Jacqueline Baker, was wonderful, but I also had a college professor, Larry Davenport, who helped me see how to join my interest in science with writing. He’s a botany professor at Samford University, and he also writes a nature column in the Alabama Heritage Magazine. He shared some of his columns in class, and they were excellent models for merging science and human interest. He’s also has a book out now, and I was touched that he sent me a copy when it came out.

You have said that you began writing nonfiction in college. Did you write in other genres earlier?

Yes, I started proclaiming a desire to be an author in elementary school. Of course, then I always assumed it would be fiction. I have done some fiction, and I had a fiction story published in Spider magazine a few years ago, but at some point I decided I wanted to focus on one thing and do it well. Science writing seemed like the logical place to settle. I don’t rule out doing more fiction later in life, but I’m passionate about this, and enjoy it.

I agree with you that kids need the “WOW!” factor when learning about science. How do you teach science teachers to help kids become excited about the natural world without realizing they are “learning?”

The biggest thing I push is to let kids have the hands-on experience first. Traditionally, teachers lecture or assign reading first, and then have the kids do a lab to “see what they were talking about.” It makes such a difference for kids to explore the actual stuff first, and then they are ready to learn all the vocabulary and principles afterwards.

Please talk a bit about your work with special needs students.

As a teacher, I just ended up as the go-to science teacher for placing a lot of the special needs students in my school. Later, working for the University of Georgia, they needed someone to teach a course for teachers titled, “Teaching Science to Students with Special Needs.” I volunteered to supplement my experience with more research, and took over the class. It was very fulfilling.

Do you feel that many students are generally unprepared in reading comprehension, or do you think that science literature presents special reading challenges?

Science reading is my area of research; I often do staff development with teachers on this topic, so I could go on and on about the reasons students struggle to read science. One huge problem I encounter when reading with students is that they don’t have the background knowledge that the text assumes. So the writer starts explaining something, but starts the explanation way ahead of what the reader knows, and the reader never has a chance to understand. Now that I’m in writing, I know a lot of times editors cut that crucial background information in the interest of word counts or keeping the writing energized. But it’s hard on struggling students.

Please share some of your favorite authors/titles.

I read a lot of preschool books with my children right now, and I recently came across a wonderful piece of non-fiction for preschoolers, MY GOOSE BETSY, by Trudy Braun. It managed to entice even my fiction-only daughter. I’m terribly jealous of Vicki Cobb’s work. I especially love her book, I FALL DOWN. I also love an old middle-grade novel that’s out of print now, WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS, by Patricia M. St. John. But, of course, my favorites change with whatever I’m reading.

If you could invite people from the scientific world, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why would they interest you?

Right now, I think it would have to be Michael Welland, the author of SAND: THE NEVER ENDING STORY. He’s a geologist who has poured his lifetime of studying sand into this densely-packed, beautifully written book. It’s truly a work of love. I mean, there just can’t be an enormous audience for a book on sand, so he wasn’t after fame and fortune! But he has mixed fascinating history tales and complex scientific discussions with some fabulous, literary-quality writing. It must have taken years to research and write, and I’d love to meet the man behind the passion.

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Thanks for your thoughts and words, Jodi! “Passion” is a great final word in our conversation, because that is what you convey in your pursuit of science, and that is what you are inspiring in your students who will need to understand the world they will inherit.

Meet more of the wik12 faculty by following their blog tour!

Aug. 15                Sharon Pegram at Writers and Wannabes (http://www.writersandwannabes.com/)

Aug. 16                Sarah Campbell at Alison Hertz’s blog, On My Mind (http://www.AlisonHertz.blogspot.com/)

Aug. 17                F.T. Bradley at Laura Golden’s blog (http://authorlauragolden.com/blog/)

Aug. 20               Chuck Galey at Elizabeth Dulemba’s blog (http://dulemba.blogspot.com/)

Aug. 21                Jo Kittinger at Bonnie Herold’s blog, Tenacious Teller of Tales (http://tenacioustelleroftales.blogspot.com)

Aug. 22               Irene Latham at Robyn Hood Black’s blog, Read, Write, Howl (http://www.robynhoodblack.com/blog.htm)

Aug. 23               Vicky Alvear Shecter at S.R. Johannes’ blog (http://www.srjohannes.com/)

Aug. 24               Doraine Bennett at Cathy Hall’s blog (http://cathychall.wordpress.com/)

Aug. 27               Virginia Butler at Bonnie Herold’s blog, Tenacious Teller of Tales (http://tenacioustelleroftales.blogspot.com)

Aug. 28               Jodi Wheeler-Toppen at Diane Sherrouse’s blog, The Reading Road (www.thereadingroad.com)

Aug. 29               Ellen Ruffin at Sarah Frances Hardy’s blog, Picture This (www.sfhardy.blogspot.com)

Aug. 30               Donna Jo Napoli at Writers and Wannabes (http://www.writersandwannabes.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Black Bears to Bumblebees

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In an earlier post, I said that one thing always leads to another along the reading road, a.k.a., my life. Mental meandering has so often become fascination, so “over the river and through the woods” from black bears to bumblebees seems natural. Good science requires time and patience; getting to the last page isn’t exactly instant gratification. It’s more like a treasure hunt where you have to dream, delve, and, often, literally dig in the dirt. Complicating all this is the fact that I have a family, with all the maintenance, surprises, holidays, advice given and taken or not, and daily love which often present detours around any other project underway. During all the stirring of pots and bandaging of bumps, thoughts and curiosity tug and won’t leave, ever.

A few years ago, I returned to academic life and jumped into a course in environmental literature. While reading and researching, I began to think about black bears with their history and their present state. Their decline affects so much more than the bears, themselves. A phone call put me in touch with a wildlife biologist who introduced me to a couple of experts studying bears in other states, and we began a five-year discourse, including particular details of radio-collared bears and others in the wild. I tried not to be side-tracked by more creatures, like birds and bees, but habitats in two states were a big playground/discovery center for me. I couldn’t know that this would lead to a rare invitation to accompany biologists into the field one summer to capture a black bear. Armed with hundreds of facts and years of study, I joined them in Tensas National Wildlife Preserve in northern Louisiana. My husband, Jim, carried my cameras and field equipment, and off we went.

Our ATV rumbled along through dense brush beneath towering old giants of oak, American elm, green ash and sweet gum. Palmettos had been grouped to form a path to a brush-covered foot snare that would not harm the bear. A nearby paw-paw tree yielded its melon-shaped fruit as well as a sack of raspberry scent (visible in the photo below). The coup de maître were honeybuns hung from trees and scattered in the brush just beyond the snare. With five traps laid, would luck be with us?

Anticipation was palpable that early morning. After finding the first trap empty, we moved on toward the second a few miles away. We found bear tracks crisscrossed with raccoon tracks parallel to a row of randomly bent corn stalks and nibbled cobs along a corn field bordering the woods. Around a bend, suddenly, “There she is!” A female black bear had flattened a 15-foot circle of brush permitted by the length of her snare attachment and sat in the middle registering typical displeasure by an intermittent snapping of the jaws and blowing with the lips. Then noises in the brush directed us toward a huge elm about 20 feet into the dense embankment above a crook of a tributary of the Tensas River. We watched a fuzzy cub heed its mother’s guttural signals and scamper to a vantage point on a limb about 25 feet up the trunk. A small, solid black head would alternately peek and retreat behind the limb, tiny ears at attention. We judged it to be about five months old, and approximately 15 pounds – about the size of a cocker spaniel.

Female black bear secured by foot snare. Note raspberry scent sack in tree.

Black bear cub

We needed to work fast so Mother Bear could return to nursery duty. We tranquilized her with a dart, examined, weighed and measured, and then outfitted her with a radio collar for tracking and further research. Care was taken to allow for any weight gain before the collar would wear away in a year or two. A glance up to the leaf canopy revealed a fast-asleep cub stretched out full-length, squirrel-fashion, belly flush and four legs limply dangling from either side of the limb. I knew there were yet a couple of fleeting minutes for me to rub the head and back of this wild creature in repose — silent minutes eloquent enough to convey to the most skeptical the value of preserving its kind, indicator of the well-being of so many other species of our forests and, ultimately, man. There is much more about this day, and my longer account was published in the Louisiana Conservationist magazine.

Me, with female black bear

Not letting go of black bears, and that one special black bear, fast forward a few years through new technology and new ways of communicating and publishing. One sleepy spring morning along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I opened the back porch door and was overcome with the fragrance of blossoms, the incessant hum of an undulating halo of bumblebees around our Meyer lemon tree, the music of water spilling over the fountain bowls. I forgot breakfast, grabbed my camera, and that’s how my first ebook was born. The words wrote themselves in my head, and I forced myself to turn back to the house to write the story for children, to help them understand. They need to know that without these quiet, ongoing activities underfoot, out of sight, on the wing, here and gone in the space of moments, we would not exist. It really wasn’t such a stretch from black bears to bumblebees. It was logical/magical.

I hope you’ll let yourself enter the world with new eyes. Grab a book about what catches your imagination, really see, walk and hunt, poke under things, ask questions and find answers. There are friends connected to those answers. You will be comforted, surprised, thrilled. It works. Whether black bears to bumblebees, or anything else, you’ll see how everything is truly connected. You’ll make sense of your happy unlikelihoods!