Teach For America Intern at IRIS

Bella Desai, Teach For America

Bella Desai (left) and fellow Teach For America corps member demonstrate an activity designed to teach about seismic waves.

My first encounter with IRIS happened while I was waiting outside Jeffrey Park's door during his office hours for Geology & Geophysics 120 at Yale. I was a freshman, enrolled as a "probable" English major, taking the class to fulfill my natural science requirement. The student before me was taking a long time, so my eyes naturally wandered around the Kline Geology Lab corridor and settled on a fetching poster of travel time curves. And there it was, in the lower right hand corner, in stately font topped with an elegant seismic trace, "the IRIS consortium."I thought, "Cool logo."

Little did I know that three months later I would find myself "trying out the research thing," wrestling with Fortran and downloading seismic data from the IRIS DMC and SPYDER^®. When I decided that a second major in History would complement "the Geophysics thing," I didn't know that IRIS would become the focus of my History thesis. And certainly, when I abandoned Geophysics and History altogether at graduation to do Teach For America, I didn't realize I would be working as an IRIS intern the following summer. IRIS follows me around like the moon.

In this latest encounter, I have been working to fortify the .edu in IRIS's domain name. During the school year, I am a second grade teacher in East Palo Alto, California. I have been working this summer to bring earthquake science to elementary students such as my own. I believe that if seismology as a field is to continue flourishing, we need to educate not only those select few who will eventually become seismologists, but also every one else, who will foot the bill. We all know, as scientists, the importance of basic research in seismology as an end in itself. We need to instill this value in the public. Every child in elementary school is taught and learns to appreciate art, music, and sports. Only a tiny fraction of children will ever become professional artists, musicians, or athletes, but almost all of them will grow to feel that these fields are inherent in a civilized society. It is difficult to feel that basic seismology research is inherent in today's civilized society if you don't even know what "seismology" means. This summer, I have created elementary, middle, and high school lesson plans to support IRIS's upcoming display in the American Museum of Natural History Discovery Room. I have also created a set of second grade lessons that are an extension of a standard language arts curriculum used widely throughout California. By integrating seismology directly into language arts, I hope to make it easier for teachers to bring seismology into their classrooms.

As I prepare to head back to school this fall, I leave with a stack of lessons and ideas under my arm. My goal as a Teach For America teacher is to provide students in under-resourced areas with the opportunity to attain an excellent education. As I return to fulfill the second half of my two-year commitment, I feel confident that this joint internship between Teach For America and IRIS will help me reach that goal. Perhaps I will meet a elementary student someday who has used the integrated curriculum or done a workshop at the museum. Maybe she will show me the different waves in the seismic trace above the purple IRIS letters on the corner of a poster. And then I'll think, "Cool logo."

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