OSTERVILLE – Abby Wood, Cape Cod Academy’s Science Department Chair, has been selected to participate in Ecology Project International’s Teacher Fellowship to Yellowstone National Park. She is one of only a dozen who have been chosen from around the country to participate.
It’s an intensive twelve day course which explores inquiry-based teaching methods. This is done through hands-on learning initiatives and field research. Yellowstone has been chosen due to its intensity of natural systems and the complex human interactions within them.
One goal is to explore the importance of using authentic life experiences to teach science.
Headmaster Tom Trigg has this to say about Abby. “Twenty-five percent of our graduates last year intended to major in a hard science in college. I think this reflects the way Abby and her science colleagues bring science to life and teach students that they can make a difference in the world through scientific problem-solving.”
One of the research projects she’ll be conducting is observing how bison have taken over as the Park’s dominant grazing force and what that means for the areas native plants. Her team will collect data on how they co-exist with similar animals such as elk, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, and mule deer.
In addition, they will be observing and learning about wolf packs with members of the Yellowstone Wolf Project, who reintroduced them in 1995.
Abby has been a teacher at CCA since 2015.