Waiting For the Fall

Sometimes, we think about fall in terms of cooler, crisper weather; sometimes we think of it in terms of back-to-school sales and shifts in schedules. For me and Marine CSI, fall is a tough time, where year after year, I'm waiting for the "other shoe to fall." August is a weird month, filled with updates and behind-the-scenes work to prepare my biggest and most successful flagship program, Watershed Walkabout. Over the last eight years I've been in business, this program has gone through some heavy changes, as a trial-and-error way to entice more schools and teachers to participate early on in the school year. For the first half of my business run, I spoke only in terms of biological and ecological science. This put me on the fast track to pack my spring, because that's when they were specifically teaching those units. About two years ago, I decided to take a chance and offer some unique earth and physical science activities which centered around marine science. I had no way of knowing that once I changed the website, changed my program lesson plan book, and bought most of the supplies for those activities, that the government would shut down and my whole operation would be crippled for a full semester.

I have not been able to recover from that. The truth is, no matter how I change my programs, partnerships, or offerings, it will not matter to the people who I am recruiting for my business. If THEY can't do it in their schedules, can't afford it, can't find the funds to cover it, Marine CSI does not run as a business. End of story.

While I thought offsetting my time in between school programs would look like partner programs and teacher/educator workshops, those too have proven to not make up the difference. I am relying on other people to recruit and register participants through their websites, only to find out that without me doing the bulk of the work, they don't run either. I have had to cancel more programs and workshops this year alone due to lack of participation. I've also had to seriously reconsider the types of programs I offer outside my school-based program. Those can now be found as a separate page on my website: Partnerships

I'm tired of the trial-and-error aspect of my business and wish for it to not be all errors. I'm tired of trying new ideas, only for the potential clients to not be able to fund or participate in what I have to offer them. I do not get paid any other way than by participation fees, so I've lost a lot of money on supplies without the demand. And I don't have any spiffy or commercial advertising gimmicks to get people to act on my offerings. What you see is exactly what you get.

I'm starting off this fall with a full slate of in-school outreach activities, provided for a full hour of student time, as I rotate from classroom to classroom in one grade. That's the formula that has worked for me for 20 years. An added bonus is when a school can set me up in one room and the students come to me throughout the day. I have lessons and activities that match earth and environmental, physical, and biological science standards, so there's no question on how they meet the requirements of what students should be learning in their science curriculum.

The question is now can it be funded? Can my business sustain itself on the mediocre funding school districts (and parents themselves) are willing to pull together for great enrichment for their students and kids? This is not a public verses private versus homeschool issue. This is a money problem, plain and simple. If you're not willing to put the money into the hands of Marine CSI staff and business, we simply cease to exist, and you have lost a great resource for science education.

Let's also not forget that science is now being offered as an alternating subject a half hour each day alongside social studies in the classroom. And, because it wasn't taught well in the past, unless parents have an interest in it, they are not using it as a primary subject for homeschooling. What science education offers in terms of reading comprehension, interdisciplinary, critical thinking, communication skills, group work, problem solving, and writing would help students with ALL other subjects far better than spending an insane amount of time focusing strictly on hour-long activities in reading, writing, and math. But alas, we teach our kids to test out, rather than learn, so what they absorb from the internet becomes their sole means of educational growth, which isn't saying much for the youth of today and the success of tomorrow.

Marine CSI, as a business model, as a company dedicated to the overall education of a student, and to the expansion of the educator's role in the quality of students' learning, needs to keep going. This can only be accomplished with the help and partnership of others. If that means parents who are homeschooling form a co-op and bring marine science into their kids' experiences, or pay for these programs to come to their schools through their PTAs and PTSOs, then let it be so. If it means school districts set aside funding for in-school field trip options, rather than just a pool of money for on-site field trips that must be rotated by grade year after year, then do it. If it means not relying on government funding to push a sideways agenda of standardized testing and graduating robot students, but actually giving students an opportunity to learn and think for themselves, while having fun and interacting with each other, then let's push for this instead.

Marine CSI was never meant to be something I set out to accomplish or check off for my career expansion. It fell into my life the same way the leaves fall to the ground - unexpected and at the right time. I just need to hold onto that hope that another bud will form and another leaf will grow, every year I am faced with the uncertainty of whether I will be asked to teach students, educators, or families what I have grown to know and continue to learn.