by Linda McCandless
Geneva, NY - Entomologists at Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station are taking bugs out of the laboratories and fields and putting them into the hands of elementary school children in the Geneva public schools. So far this spring, live honey bees, tobacco hornworms, nematodes, cabbage loopers, apple maggots, and Japanese beetle grubs have made the trip and most have lived to tell the tale.
Educating the typical "bug swatter" or "insect stomper" about environmental and ecological issues is no small task. In the half mile that separates the world-class research facility from North Street Elementary School, for instance, a honey bee makes a transition from being a carefully husbanded partner in fruit tree pollination, to a "stinger on the fly" whose existence is threatened every time it lands.
Teaching the children an appreciation for the beneficial aspect of insects is only one of the lessons doctors Jan Nyrop, Art Agnello, Mike Villani, and research assistants from Villani's lab hope to impart.
"If the kids didn't enjoy it, we wouldn't do it," said Villani. "We get them thinking about insects. We also try to show them that education can be interesting and fun. They see that science is exciting work and that it is something both men and women do equally. The reason our approach works is that it is really a team effort. Everybody in my lab is involved in planning and carrying out the activities with the class."
The seven members of Villani's lab team include Nancy Consolie, Luann Preston-Wilsey, Wendy Heusler, Steve Hitchcock, Paul Robbins, Robert Jarecke, and Linda Ferguson-Kolmes.
Villani and his research team are spending one hour a week for five weeks with second graders, and two-and-one-half hours a week for nine weeks with fifth graders in the North Street School. In May, Nyrop and Agnello presented a series of half-hour enrichment activities centered around elementary insect biology, lifestyles, and pest/benefit status that revolved around both pinned and live specimens to third and fourth graders and special ed students at North Street and West Street schools. Nyrop also ran a special three-week project with third graders at North Street.
In the second grade, Villani's team concentrates on wowing the kids with a highly interactive, hands-on approach to "hexapoda," (the official name for insects-- " 'hexa' meaning 'six' and 'poda' meaning 'legs' "). In the fifth grade, the team teaches the children more about scientific methodology, hypotheses, data, and how to run an experiment.
The first week, the team took honey bees to class. Breaking up into five groups of five children and one entomologist each, the children observed live bees under the microscope, saw stingers and pollen sacs, and learned about the bees' role as pollinators. The second week, the team tbrought in tobacco hornworms they had reared - blue-green, two-and-one-half-inch caterpillars that the children were able to hold. Many were initially squeamish about the activity. Tenika Rivers ended up petting the hornworm as it crawled up her forearm. "Ooh, it tickles," she said. "He's soft."
The class took a mini field trip to the school courtyard to collect various plant materials to feed the hornworms. Over the next 24 hours, they were asked to observe which plants the hornworm preferred. In Trevor Linn's group, the hornworm ignored the tomato leaf and headed for the tulip. "It's like the flower is calling it," said Linn, who was watching the hornworm very intently. In a discipline where chemical cues produced by insects and plants are being increasingly used to control insects biologically, this budding scientist's observation is right on target.
In addition to infusing the kids with their enthusiasm for science and being good role models, the entomologists also expose the kids to technologies not readily available in the public school system. With the high-magnification microscope attached to a video camera which they brought with them from the Experiment Station, Paul Robbins magnified the hornworm 60 times to show the class the hornworm's pulsating dorsal aorta. "The hornworm doesn't have one heart like we do," he explained, as the yellow aorta pulsed under the blue skin on the overhead television.
The third week, the team helped the class set up Japanese beetle terraria using two-liter Coke bottles and Japanese beetle grubs that had been artificially reared in the lab. In two weeks, the Japanese beetles will pupate, crawl out of the soil, and begin to feed on plant material, affording the kids a fun, hands-on science activity that they build, observe, and manage themselves. "Villani and his team enhance our CIMS (Comprehensive Instructional Management Systems) Science Program phenomenally," said Mrs. Christine Farrington, the second-grade teacher whom Villani approached about the project last fall. "The kids' observation and language skills are improving tremendously. All the activities are very high-interest and keep their attention."
On Friday, May 20, Art Agnello and Jan Nyrop presented the first of four half-hour mini-courses on insect biology to a group of rapt third and fourth graders and special ed students. Props included cases of mounted insects, a wooden fish, a silk tie, a huge hypodermic needle, a picture of a European red mite, a box of compost teeming with insects and worms, and an alphabet poster whose letters were made from naturally-occuring designs on butterfly wings. Dressed in bug T-shirts and jeans, the two entomologists made a lively effort to raise the students' awareness about a world where three-quarters of all animals are insects. In quick succession, the kids learned that all insects have six legs, four wings, three body parts, and an exoskeleton. That people have only been on the earth 100,000 years whereas cockroaches and beetles have been here millions of year. That there are over one million species of named insects and another four or five million species that are not yet named. That in a world without insects, we wouldn't have fruits, vegetables, chocolate, tea, linen, vanilla, coffee, silk, cotton, colas, or food for higher animals. And - the most important lesson of all - that only one out of 100 insect species is harmful or considered to be a pest. Agnello reassured the children that it is an insect's exoskeleton which prevents it from getting "like those monster insects you see on TV" because an exoskeleton larger than four inches "can't possibly hold an insect's insides together."
"I'm convinced that environmental and ecological attitudes are established early in life," said Nyrop, between sessions. "It's important to create an appreciation for science and insects early."
"You never know when you are going to spark an interest that will take a child through the rest of his or her life," said Becky Addona, who is in charge of K-5 enrichment programs at Geneva Elementary Schools, and who worked closely with Nyrop and Agnello to set up the outreach opportunities. "The entomologists enhance science units that the kids are already doing. They make science more real, give the kids real hands-on experience, and are excellent role models. A lot of them have children in the school." Altogether, the entomologists will interact with about 400 children this spring. More programs are planned for the future. "It is a totally volunteer effort on their part, and we appreciate it," says Addona. "It makes such a difference to the kids when people from the community come into the schools and share their enthusiasm for work."
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