For Teresa Ballou, a biology teacher at Westerville North High School, her experience with Stone Lab’s Water and Wildlife Training for Educators in the summer of 2023 was unexpectedly transformational.

Over the course of a week on the Lake Erie islands, including Stone Lab’s Gibraltar Island, she engaged in hands-on learning about how to bring Great Lakes science into the classroom, integrating concepts into lesson plans for students in grades 4-12. Alongside other educators, she practiced using this inquiry-based teaching approach.

“It was honestly some of the most amazing professional development I have ever done,” Ballou said. “While teaching environmental issues like pollution and microplastics, I would always focus on oceans. I am now aware of the missed opportunities to talk about nurdles and microplastics closer to home.”

Ballou had little experience with Lake Erie while growing up in southern Ohio, but getting to have firsthand encounters during the workshop inspired her to return to the Great Lakes to continue to deepen her abilities as an educator.

Two years after her experience with the educators workshop, Ballou applied for and joined the group of educators participating in this year’s R/V Lake Guardian Shipboard Science Immersion.

As a part of the Shipboard Science Immersion, a yearly program made possible through a partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), educators work with researchers for a week on one of the Great Lakes. This year, the research vessel set out on Lake Michigan.

“While aboard the research vessel, we were able to collaborate with other educators, both formal and informal, by doing lessons and labs and discussing best practices,” Ballou said. “As educators, I feel like we say the best way to learn science is to do science. We put that into practice in July.”

Ballou’s interactions with university researchers and EPA scientists on the journey stood out to her. Their research topics included underwater archaeology and sonar scans, larval fish and the food chain, and water quality testing. Ballou spent the most time working with Derek Ager from the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office and the water quality analysis team. They collected water samples from across Lake Michigan and tested turbidity, alkalinity, pH, conductivity, and dissolved oxygen to learn about the safety and ecological sustainability of the water.

Some of Ballou’s other favorite memories aboard the R/V Lake Guardian included practicing how to wear “gumby” suits, life-saving equipment in case of evacuation, for the first time; touring the pilot house; and learning about native plants on a nature hike on Beaver Island. Professors from Central Michigan University’s Biological Station also led the educators on a nature hike to see the monkey flower, an endemic native plant, and Pitcher’s thistle, another threatened native plant.

“I feel it is a professional responsibility to find out more about the health of our Great Lakes and educate our students so they can make informed decisions.”
Teresa Ballou

After participating in the educator workshop at Stone Lab in 2023, Ballou worked what she had learned into her curriculum. At the end of the school year, she taught a six-week unit on hydrology and watersheds that was designed around Great Lakes literacy principles and what she had learned at Stone Lab.

Now, Ballou has been working with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant, one of the hosts of this year’s Shipboard Science Immersion, and another educator she met on the R/V Lake Guardian, to integrate those experiences into their classroom teaching. With the aid of resources shared by Ohio Sea Grant and Wisconsin Sea Grant, Ballou plans to further design a curriculum combining her knowledge from her time aboard the research vessel and during the workshop at Stone Lab.

“I am really hoping to theme my biology class around the topic of the Great Lakes and tie it back to real world applications from what I learned both at Stone Lab and Lake Guardian,” Ballou said. “We have state standards, but I want to anchor them in the Great Lakes. I want every example or vignette I use to be focused on the lakes and what I have learned.”

In addition to her efforts to bring science lessons closer to home through Lake Erie and the Great Lakes, Ballou also hopes to continue to learn more about the Great Lakes herself.

“I feel it is a professional responsibility to find out more about the health of our Great Lakes and educate our students so they can make informed decisions,” she said.

Ohio Sea Grant is supported by The Ohio State University College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences (CFAES) School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University Extension, and NOAA Sea Grant, a network of 34 Sea Grant programs nation-wide dedicated to the protection and sustainable use of marine and Great Lakes resources. Stone Laboratory is Ohio State’s island campus on Lake Erie and is the research, education, and outreach facility of Ohio Sea Grant and part of CFAES School of Environment and Natural Resources.