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Cathy Boehme     Woodham High School      Pensacola, Florida

HI! I am a biology and marine biology teacher at Woodham High School in Pensacola, Florida. Woodham is a medium sized, suburban public high school in a large school district in the northwest corner of the state. I teach mostly sophomores in my Biology  I  classes, and juniors and seniors in an elective course called Marine Science. I also coach the Woodham Academic Team and  co-coach with my colleague, Bill Willis, the Escambia County  All-star Academic Team. I have been a science teacher at Woodham for 16 years. Woodham is really home for me as I attended high school there, and returned to begin teaching shortly after finishing my undergraduate training at Birmingham-Southern College.
 

The Pensacola area is the perfect place to teach about the environment. We have a major estuary, and barrier islands along the beach as well as live oak and coastal plains ecosystems a little bit farther inland.  We maintain classroom aquaria with "critters" from the local marine systems as well as study plants from the woods around the school, so that students can become a little bit more familiar with the natural history of the area. We also have a class pet. Her name is "Fluffy" she is a 12 foot long Burmese Python who seems to like hanging out at school....smart lady!

One of the highlights of my Woodrow Wilson experience was a visit to New Jersey's Marine Science Academy. We were able to go out on the RV Blue Sea and pull the otter trawl.  The fish that we caught were measured on a special board, the information recorded, and the fish were then released.
 
 


We also were taken to the NOAA lab on Sandy Hook where they study the fish stocks of the Northern Atlantic Ocean. We saw captive fish called sea robins that seem to be major predators of the young winter flounder. The tanks were set up with video cameras to record the behavior of the fish. We also were able to look at the tanks were the "brood stock" flounder were maintained.
 


I am very proud to coach the school's academic team which competes in many tournaments with both general academic and subject specific formats. We are proud to have been in participants in the National Tournament of Champions in Chicago this May where we placed third in the country.

We also were second place at the Hurricane Bowl, the regional tournament of the National Ocean Sciences Bowl held at the J.L. Scott Marine Education Center and Aquarium in Biloxi,  Mississippi. Below is a picture of four of Woodham's  Ocean Sciences Bowl team members.

Woodham High School's Ocean Science Bowl Team
Team members: Michael Wuest, Charles Allen, Tyler Dorsett, and Rhys Ziemba

My interests, aside from teaching, coaching and wave watching include all sorts of outdoors activities with my family and anything that involves music and folk crafts.


Some of my favorite web sites for teaching science include:

Woodrow Wilson Institute Resources

Access Excellence Activities Exchange

Bermuda Biological Station

Tsunami

The Plankton Net

The JASON Project

Monterey Bay Aquarium On Line

National Sea Grant Program

NOAA

Rosenstiel Remote Sensing Group, University of Miami

Rutgers: Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences

Woods Hole K-12 resources
 
 

E-mail


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The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation
CN 5281, Princeton NJ 08543-5281 - Tel:(609)452-7007 - Fax:(609)452-0066
Technical contact: lpt@woodrow.org