by Andre Mor

Larger imageTeachers at the Earthquake Education workshop SCEC co-hosted with AEG.

According to the California Science Content Standards, sixth grade is Earth Sciences year, and part of a teacher's job is to teach earthquakes. It is with that in mind that middle school teacher Sue Robins attended the earthquake education workshop SCEC co-hosted with AEG back in September.

Robins, who has been teaching 6^th graders at Culver City Middle School for the past three years, is not new to the subject of earthquake education, but she still found the workshop very helpful. She plans to use several items in the Earthquake Country Los Angeles Educators kit, distributed at the workshop, as teaching material for her class. For starters, Robins plans on making good use of "Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country," the SCEC-designed handbook that provides earthquake science and safety information.

"I'm going to use it, actually, instead of the textbook, because it's much better than the textbook in terms of explaining the basics of earthquakes," said the teacher. "This will be [the students'] reading material, and they will be given questions to answer based on it" Apart from earthquake science, teaching earthquake safety is also part of the 6^th grade curriculum. Because of that, Robins says she is going to teach the "Seven Steps to Earthquake Safety," a section of the handbook that shows how to prepare and deal with an earthquake. She is even considering assigning some of the steps as homework: "I'm thinking of assigning at least step one – to have them identify potential hazards in their home, and how to fix them."

Other than Roots, Robins said that the workshop was very helpful to reiterate some teaching exercises she knew about and uses to teach her students. She agrees that exercises such as the map puzzle, cut-apart maps used to show the interaction of the planet’s tectonic plates, or the use of a slinky to explain different types of wave motions are important tools for middle school teachers. According to Robins, "visuals are so powerful" when it comes to teaching 6^th graders, and that is why she also plans to show parts of the DVD copy of the video Earthquake Country Los Angeles that was included in the kit.

Overall, Robins has a positive outlook on the value that SCEC workshops have to educators. And as far as earthquake education goes, teaching children is just as important as teaching adults.

"It turns out that by the time they're finished with this unit, many of the students are more knowledgeable about earthquake safety than their parents are," said Robins. "They should use that knowledge, because they can potentially save lives and property." "When children get focused on something they won't let it go, so they can really be a powerful force in getting their parents to do the action that they should."