Education at the World’s Largest Marine Classroom
“You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.”
Clay P. Bedford
Imagine your classroom in an aquarium, with thousands of marine species like sharks, jellyfish, coral reefs and a host of other species surrounding you. Or have marine animal specialists as your guest teachers, sharing first-hand information on how to care for animals and the importance of species conservation.
All this can be a reality come 2012, with the upcoming Marine Life Park (MLP).
Recently, the team at MLP conducted a Marine Life Park Pre-opening Educator’s Presentation, allowing over 300 principals and teachers from more than 70 schools a sneak peek into the educational programmes the park is offering next year.
One of the key team members spearheading our education programmes is Eileen Toh, and we asked her to tell us more about the World’s Largest Marine Classroom.
1. What can we expect when Marine Life Park opens in 2012?
Even though Marine Life Park has yet to open, we can still bring marine life education to schools. Beginning 2012, we will be conducting hands-on Classroom Programmes.
One of these aims is to inspire students to pursue opportunities in the marine life industry, and we hope to achieve that by offering them stimulating and interactive hands-on activities, specifically designed to show what a day in the marine life park would be like.
Further down the road, we will be implementing customised programmes such as Job Shadow For A Day, Researcher For A Day, Student Mentoring Programmes, and Student Internship Programmes. In fact, we already took in our first polytechnic interns earlier this year.
2. What did the teachers have to say about the Presentation?
The response was very encouraging. When we spoke to the teachers after the presentation, they were very interested in inviting us into their schools to conduct classroom talks and demonstrations. We were pleasantly surprised that they could recall the exact names and information given during the presentation.
3. What does it take to become an educator at Marine Life Park?
Most importantly, it is the love of reaching out to children and youth. He/she must be comfortable with speaking to people and also have a passion for nature and the marine world.
We are challenging our educators to think out-of-the-box and to assist in coming up with and implementing a wide variety of education and interpretive lessons for all ages.
It’s all about being creative and engaging. Anything can be fun to learn for students, when they’re in a stimulating setting. I’m already planning an interactive Mathematics lesson at the Aquarium when the Marine Life Park opens next year. The sky is the limit here because we have so many interesting animals, places, people and activities.
4. What inspired you to get into marine education?
I was teaching Chemistry for nine years in a junior college. Some three years ago, I was on an overseas science enrichment trip with my students where I had the opportunity to stay on the field station on Moreton Bay in Australia to observe and understand firsthand the scientific study of fish ecology, mangroves, turtles and other fishes.
I will never forget the look on the students’ faces during one session when they observed the professionals performing their work with a turtle that had unfortunately died due to the ingestion of non-biodegradable materials. It was then that I realized the importance of educating our young about the threats to the ocean, enhancing our understanding of the ocean wildlife and ecosystems and understanding more about the conservation and preservation of the Ocean’s most precious resources.
The firsthand experience of watching these professionals care for the animals made it a lesson in itself. It made me appreciate the importance of zoological and marine facilities, as these facilities allow scientists to save, study, learn more about the animals in ways that would otherwise be impossible in the wild.
5. How do you go about creating a whole education curriculum for Marine Life Park?
I am really excited that we have a very internationally experienced partner to help us develop our programs, Sea Research Foundation based in Connecticut on the East Coast of the U.S. They operate Mystic Aquarium, the JASON Project, an award-winning program, and the Institute of Exploration. We are already working closely with their staff and are having a great time building our lesson plans – everything from horseshoe crabs to going live, via the Internet, to the Nautilus research submersible. I am sure students and teachers in Singapore will benefit greatly from their expertise and resources.
6. What has been the greatest challenge so far?
As with educating people of any age, the greatest challenge is to make it interesting, and relevant to Singapore. When it comes to Singapore’s education, we are trying to make it relevant to the schools as there is no specific module on marine biology in the science curriculum.
This is a great learning experience for me. I’ve been talking to our experts and am in awe of their wealth of experience and areas of expertise. These opportunities have helped me develop ideas on how we can best bring all this knowledge it into schools.
7. In the time that you have been with Marine Life Park, anything inspirational or interesting you would like to share?
We can all play a part in conservation, no matter young or old, small or tall.
If you’re interested in reading more about our educational programmes, please download the PDF here.