So I was showing my kids our new home (as of this Thursday) on the satellite version of google maps and noticed that the water on the coast is really, really blue. I'm thinking: What beautiful crystal clear waters we'll get to swim in! Well my geekiness got the best of me and I really just HAD to know why it was so blue so I did what any educated researcher would do... I googled it. :)
This is probably common knowledge for everybody else, but I didn't pay much attention to science in school (ironically it's one of my FAVORITE things to teach now). So here's what I learned: Apparently the Mississippi River carries all sorts of pesticides and animal waste down from farms and dumps it into the Gulf right there on the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. That all makes sense - I guess I just hadn't thought about it much. Well the effect of this is a Dead Zone in which there is an overgrowth of algae and little oxygen so it kills off a lot of the gulf's ecosystem. This seems like one of those issues to teach kids about and maybe when they grow up they'll seek out a way to fix it, changing the world one fish at a time! I know I'm an optimistic, dorky teacher, but that's the kind of stuff that makes me excited about teaching! I found a pretty cool website for kids about it. Click here for the link.
I'm gonna be honest - I'm pretty excited to know something about Mississippi to teach these kids! I could give them all sorts of Ohio history but I'm not sure the administrators would go for that...
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