Ken Lacy of the IAFI Wenatchee Chapter hosted an information booth at the 2022 Washington Science Teachers Association Conference on Oct. 14-15 in Wenatchee, WA. His was the first use of a new table-top display that we recently developed for conferences, meetings and conventions. Ken felt the display,with its impressive graphics, showing maps and images of Ice Age Floods features, attracted a lot of interest and attention and fostered great opportunities to further engage with the conference goers as they came in for a closer look. He felt there was a high level of interest in the Ice Age Floods topic and people were keen to learn more about the floods, which led to many good conversations.
It also gave Ken and opportunity to talk to as many as 10 ESD Science Coordinators about our project to provide 4th Grade level education materials about the Ice Age Floods. Their response was uniformly that this idea would not be well received because there was no time available for additional non-formulary classes. One of these Science Coordinators suggested it might be possible to combine our Floods program with an existing program, such as Language Arts, by presenting Floods information and having the students “prove” the existence of the floods by listing facts that supported this hypothesis.
In another discussion with a retired school administrator about the issue of available time for our 4th Grade Floods program, she cited two examples of havin had to turn down outside offers of valuable educational programs because there was just not enough class time available for those programs. However, when Science Coordinators and teachers were asked about the idea of having IAFI people either conduct classes themselves or help the teachers develop such a class, the response was quite positive. The different response to the idea of our 4th Grade Floods program and the proposal for individual classes is significant in terms of class-time and preparation required. A single class session can often be fit into the schedule, but a multi-class program may cut too deeply into the time needed for required cirricula. Still, there are several sections in the Washington State Fourth Grade Curriculum that can support the inclusion of our proposed Ice Age Floods program. It will therefore be necessary for IAFI to work with the ESD Science Coordinators in each school district to get their support for the inclusion of our project.