Hi everyone,
The spring field meeting is coming up, April 10-12 at Sequoyah State Park. Information will be available soon on the OAS website. Some of you may already be planning on bringing a lot of students as part of your classes. But if not, I suggest an alternative, one that I have used for many years in the past.
I offer extra credit to students for participating in the field meetings. I am usually unable to offer them a ride, so they have to get themselves to the field meeting site and back. Quite a few of them have managed to do so. I require them, for extra credit, to participate in a morning or an afternoon field trip on Saturday. For distant locations, I offer a little more extra credit. How much? You can figure that out.
Of course, there is the concern that students may show up and not pay attention. It is conceivable that a student might show up and just stand around and spit tobacco. (I wish I were making this up. It has happened on required class field trips.) Also, there is the concern that I have some evidence to show that the students fully participated in the trip. To accomplish these things, I have each student write a unique one-page summary of what they learned. This gets them to be fully engaged and gives me documentation. Since, nearly without exception, my students who have come to OAS have been highly motivated, they are happy to do this.
This is something to think ahead about as the date gets closer and closer.
Stan Rice, president
