When Teri was a young child living in Texas she
told her parents she wanted to go live in
Berkeley. Twenty years ago she made
this dream come true. She and John live in a pretty house that is often visited
by opossums and skunks raiding the cat food dish on the back deck. And the wild
turkeys still get the right-of-way on the hilly streets. Whatever I expected
the Berkeley area to be, a home to wild animals wasn’t in the picture. Looking
up into the hills you see houses surrounded by lush vegetation, while in the
other direction there is a wonderful view of the bay. Perched nearly at the top
of a hill is an iconic institute: Lawrence Hall of Science. Out
of this organization come the underpinnings of innovative science education
programs that have been adopted around the country. Before I left academia I
was privileged to participate in the distribution of one of these programs, FOSS. I still believe that the best
method for teaching science and for getting students intellectually involved is
through experimentation; FOSS develops both intellectual involvement and
curiosity to support life-long learning. Teri has one of the best jobs on the
planet; she writes and tests the curriculum for the FOSS modules.
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| View of San Francisco Bay from Lawrence Hall of Science |
