We had a fantastic time this week designing activities for K-12 students alongside three teachers from Chicago and Gainesville! Ayesha Qazi and Jennifer Campagna (Chicago Public Schools) joined Tredina Sheppard (Gainesville’s PK Yonge Developmental Research School) and the rest of the GoFlag gang for a week focused on developing activities and curricula for their classrooms that focus on teaching students about plants, plant diversity, and why plants are important for people. We got to spend time in the field collecting flagellate plants, admiring them in their natural habitats, and brainstorming about how to incorporate our field experiences into our classrooms.

This RET experience was funded by a supplement to our GoFlag grant from the National Science Foundation, and we are extremely grateful to NSF for making this visit and our collaboration with these teachers possible!

We were joined for most of the week by our two incomparable REU students, Lucy Elkin and Isabel Mansour. All photos below were taken by Isabel!

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