Curriculum, baby

Hope everyone had a great summer; I certainly did.
Max and I had a wonderful whirlwind propaganda drop at the ILA conference in St. Louis in July.   Everybody there seemed to know Dr. Lars Helgeson, so it was very cool to talk curriculum agenda and hand out brochures and books.  Next year's conference is in Boston. 

As we speak, twenty of Dr. Lars' students in his Life Science for Elementary School course at University of North Dakota are reading Nelson Telson and thinking about all sorts of ideas and activities for the curriculum.  Meanwhile, I'm making coloring pages.

Over the past few weeks Dr. Lars and I were hustling to get our grant application for curriculum development submitted to the NIH.  This is very exciting, and hopefully they'll agree that the Teaching Nelson Telson curriculum is something well worth funding.  

While putting the application together, we brought some awesome horseshoe crab experts onboard:  Glenn Gauvry, Horseshoe Crab Guy from ERDG www.horseshoecrab.org, Gary Kreamer the Green Eggs and Sand guy from the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife, and keeper of the Teacher Toolbox at horseshoecrab.org, and Allen Burgenson, Manager of Regulatory Affairs at Lonza Walkersville, Inc., a biotech/pharmaceutical company that makes lots of LAL.  He sits on the ASMFC (Atlantic States Fisheries Commission) for the horseshoe crab, and is biomedical industry representative on the joint team of ASMFC and the Shorebirds Commission.  We are so lucky and fortunate to have these specialists on our committee.  Now I need to find a Wampanoag person. 

They're not dead horseshoe crabs, they are molts.

If you have ever wondered how the heck a horseshoe crab gets out of its shell to leave those molts, legs and all, check this out and wonder no more: Molting Horseshoe Crab