On the Rocks

Alyssa Chaplin ’10 mines her own minerals to teach ninth-graders

November 24, 2009

Student teacher Alyssa Chaplin ’10 (center) explains a group wiki project to Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School ninth graders Ashley Tuttle and Matt Strauch.

As public-school budgets continue to shrink, Alyssa Chaplin ’10 of Vestal, N.Y., has a personal yet cost-effective approach to hands-on learning. An avid rock collector, the geology major is sharing her extensive collection with her ninth-graders while student teaching at Mechanicsburg Area Senior High School. 

“It’s difficult for earth-science teachers to get funding for in-school rock collections,” Chaplin says. “It’s also much more authentic and will mean more to my students if I bring in a sample and say, ‘I got this in Canada or New Mexico, and here’s a picture of me with the rock I just hammered out.’ ” 

Chaplin is taking what she calls “a path less traveled in the geology department” by getting her teaching certification in ninth-grade earth science. A member of Kappa Delta Pi, the international education honor society, she began her rock collection when she switched her major from archaeology to geology.

She’s gathered chunks of pink granite from Canada, sheaves of slate with embedded fossils, bits of copper ore and a hunk of ancient lava from New Mexico.  

“There are rocks on my windowsill, in my car, at my parents’ house—the list goes on,” she says. “Part of my collection is personal and part is looking to the future as a professional, but I love rocks all the same.”

Her duties at Mechanicsburg include teaching units on astronomy, and she recently developed a class wiki project—based on the Web resource Wikipedia—for students to learn about the solar system. Students are assigned to small groups to develop a wiki entry for each planet, which will help them with their research and collaboration skills in an online environment.

“She has it all set up,” says Deborah Hurlburt, an earth and space science teacher at the school. “We’ve done similar programs, and it’s a really beneficial project.”

Chaplin especially enjoys teaching at Mechanicsburg and plans to do an independent-study project in the spring that will allow her to continue working there. “I really like working with kids,” she says. “I’ve always known that. I like this age group, this material, this area.”