 |
UW profs, museum offer
|
- By Jo Sandin
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
As the buses pulled up, one after another, 24 school groups poured into the Milwaukee Public Museum on a pass out of class, 1,694 students ready to ditch the drill, beat the books, maybe even leave learning behind. They, boys and girls, were on a field trip!
Talk about a great time to put the mind in neutral and juuust coast. On this colorless Tuesday, the epitome of February blah, even the weather practically demanded it.
"They
not only learned, they |
The kids never had a chance. Sandbagged by storytellers, ambushed by archaeologists, mystified by mask makers, beguiled by boa constrictors, they not only learned, they liked it.
Museum staff and faculty members from the University of Wisconsin-Madison double-teamed Tuesday's visitors on a day of discovery aptly named Whys? and Wows!
It's all a part of the university's plan to celebrate its 150th anniversary by strutting its stuff on road trips across the state.
"How could they resist?" said Nick Cahill, an archaeologist and associate professor of art history, said of his constant stream of listeners. "We've got rivers of gold, wars, dead guys!"
The computer generated map on Cahill's laptop attracted Erika Cheng, 16, and Hart Moss, 17, of Whitefish Bay High School, to ancient Sardis.
As he rotated the map on the computer screen, Cahill said, "This was the richest place in the world at that time (2,500 years ago). Sardis was where you went for the fanciest clothes, the best jewels. It was located near the river because of the gold. But
they built on the hills so when people attacked, which they did, and burned it to the ground, which they did, and killed a lot of people, which they did, there was a place to retreat."
Yeah, Cahill told Cheng and Moss, he really liked his job "going to places like Turkey and digging up junk."
Clearly, this was no day for excruciatingly erudite behavior.
"Is it DNA or is it snot?" asked Tom Zinnen, director of BioTrek: The Biotechnology Outreach Program, after he led a group of students through a fast lab routine extracting DNA from wheat germ using liquid detergent and rubbing alcohol.
"Fish the glop out of the tube, spread it on the slide and you can take it with you," he told the group. "It's a nice recipe, but you can't really determine whether you've got DNA without running some more experiments."
For the record, Zinnen assured the girls, "It's DNA." No place was too remote to attract a crowd. In the Arctic reaches of the third floor, David Mickelson, professor of geology and geophysics, introduced home-grown glaciers. Across the way near the African marketplace, Harold Scheub, professor of African languages and literature, shared stories he collected while walking 6,000 miles across the continent.
Tucked into a far corner of the rain forest exhibit, Joanne Paul-Murphy, professor of veterinary medicine and an expert on exotic animals, was crowded against the wall by eager students wanting to pet Slim, a six-foot boa constrictor.
Matthew Nieberle, 5, and his younger sister Katie, 2, wriggled through the competition to caress the snake.
"I've had this on my calendar for two months," said their mother, Sue Nieberle, 32, of New Berlin, A UW-Madison alumna.
Third- and fourth-graders from Immaculate Conception School in Saukville heard Ada Deer, former head of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs and now senior lecturer for the American Indian Studies Program and a Menominee tribal member, describe the Trail of Tears. That's when the Cherokee Nation was marched by force from Georgia to Oklahoma along a route where 4,000 of them died.
Amanda Terrell, 11, and Scott King, 11, fifth-graders from Janesville, asked her about Wisconsin Indians.
"There are six tribes and about 50,000 Indians here in Wisconsin," Deer told them, "20,000 right here in Milwaukee."
As another group filed past her, Deer smiled and said, "A day off school, right?"
She didn't need an answer beyond the guilty grins.
"But learning," she added, "always learning."
Posted February 18, 1999
 |
All
About WEAC - News
- Education Resources
|
 |