COLUMBIANA 8th-graders to take part in disaster-response simulation

By NANCY TULLIS
VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU
COLUMBIANA -- Crestview Middle School's eighth-grade teachers are preparing their pupils for disaster.
In December, the eighth-grade classes will begin a three-month study through the Wheeling Jesuit University's Challenger Learning Center.
The study, called e-Mission, will drill students in various aspects of the environment, and they will become experts in the workings of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere, said science teacher Scott Workman.
E-Mission will culminate in a two-hour simulation in which pupils will use the knowledge they have gained and the skills they have honed in their specialty areas to work as an Emergency Response Team to deal with a natural disaster.
The eighth-grade classes will work the simulations in two-hour stints Feb. 24, 25 and 26.
Workman said the Challenger Learning Center staff will act much like NASA's Mission Control to give pupils updates as situations change, based on their responses.
The situation
On mission day, pupils watch as a space shuttle lifts off and astronauts repair a satellite. The satellite immediately begins broadcasting data about volcanic activity on Montserrat in the Caribbean. Twelve thousand residents await the ERT's scientific analysis of the situation. To complicate the situation, Mission Control informs the ERT of an approaching hurricane.
The pupils must gather and analyze all the information and decide what to do about evacuating residents.
Workman said different groups of pupils will have different results, depending on the skills in each group.
Besides Workman, other teachers participating in e-Mission are language arts teachers Tricia Pilcher and Erica Guerrier, math teacher Herman Miller, and social sciences teacher Ronald Yoakam.
The group ran the simulation last week, and "only killed one busload of tourists," Workman said.
Pupils will learn to make charts and graphs to record the progress of the hurricane and volcanic activity.
They will work on writing skills to send formal letters and r & eacute;sum & eacute;s to the Challenger Learning Center staff, detailing what area of the ERT they want to work, and why they believe they qualify for that particular job. At the conclusion of the program they will write reports detailing their experiences and the results of their team's decisions.