While conducting field work on the Salton Sea and staying at the UCI Anza Borrego Field station, the Mackey Lab conducted three science outreach activities with students from disadvantaged schools who were attending a summer Learning Academy.

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In the first activity, we led a graphing activity with middle schoolers in a math class based on phytoplankton counts using a microscope and projector.

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In the second activity, we worked with high schoolers who had recently come to the US, and who were learning to speak and write in English. We watched a brief documentary on the Salton Sea, and the students then wrote letters to their Congressional representative about saving the Sea. The lesson was led in a mixture of English and Spanish - a first for us! It was fun when the students could help us with our Spanish as we helped them with their English.

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In the third activity, we taught elementary schoolers in a reading class about marine food webs. Students made "food chains" out of construction paper, and practiced reading out loud about marine organisms in their chains.