Middle School Science Teacher Lora Peters was selected as a 2018 Teacher Argonaut by JASON Learning, a non-profit organization that provides STEM curriculum and learning experiences for K-12 students and professional development for teachers. As part of the program, Peters joined a group of 60 students and teachers from across the country on an educational expedition to Joshua Tree National Park in March.

How did you become a teacher argonaut?

This is the sixth year that we have been using the JASON Project in the sixth grade [curriculum]. I happened to be reading the JASON newsletter and noticed the application to be a teacher argonaut. All of the trips sounded right up my alley, so I decided to apply.... I had to write three essays and put together a three minute video about myself. The video was by far the hardest part, as many of my students can attest, I am not very skilled with iMovie.

Our group was small, three teachers, three students, and the facilitator from Jason Learning. Our mission was to aid researchers from the University of California Riverside and the National Park Service in assessing the vulnerability of several key plant and animal species to climate change.

We did population studies of Juniper trees, Pinyon pines and Joshua trees to determine the number and condition of these plants. We found areas where there were mature Juniper plants, but no seedlings, meaning that the plant will eventually disappear from that part of the park. We also did lizard surveys and we got to do turtle telemetry, where you track one of the 15 tagged desert tortoises using radar. I was tracking Martha. We found her burrow, but she was too far down for us to actually see her and assess her condition.

The scenery was spectacular wherever we went, but you could not forget that you were in the desert. One day when we were heading back to our base, the radios started buzzing. A 54-year-old man had gone missing and a large search and rescue operation was being launched. They found him alive, he was hiking by himself, had gone off trail, fallen 20 feet, hit his head and broken his leg. He was incredibly lucky they found him and he was alive.

My two favorite activities were actually at night. We went scorpion hunting with an entomologist one night. Scorpions hunt at night. They have photoreceptors on their bodies. When you shine a UV flashlight on them they fluoresce. It was a lot of fun shining the flashlights near their holes and watching them glowingly go about their business.

My other top activity was looking for a mountain lion using night vision glasses. When we had shone our flashlights out at the hills one night, we could see a pair of green eyes glowing in the distance...the wildlife biologists had set up infrared cameras so we had seen video of this magnificent creature dragging its prey. The next night, they brought the night vision glasses to see if we could actually see the cat. Unfortunately, there was no cat that night, but view of the stars through them was amazing.

"Who's watching who?” The essential question of the desert. I realized that during the lizard survey we conducted in the Cottonwood section of the park. I was concentrating so hard on trying to spot 3 different species of desert lizards during the sweep that I had a hard time actually spotting them. It wasn't until I realized that they were really watching me hidden in plain sight on the branches of the creosote bushes that I started having success. That is one of the secrets of the desert. It is watching you; from the jack rabbits to the Joshua trees, standing sentry over this beautiful world.

I now have a much better sense of the effects of climate change on the desert. This will enable me to better explain the phenomenon of climate change to my students and plan more appropriate activities that will make it more real to them. I plan on sharing my experience with the Middle School at a “Science Friday” lunch. The sixth grade will be learning about climate and climate change the last half of this quarter. I will be incorporating some of the research for which I helped gather data, as well as other studies of which I have since learned.