Everybody talks about it, so why not . . .
10:30 PM 8/13/03
Karen Rivedal Higher education reporter

Science and folklore experts from UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Arts Board are working with some K-12 teachers to create a Web site about the science and stories of Wisconsin weather.

By June, the free Web site will be available to the public and in elementary and high school classrooms throughout the state.

"The long-term goal is an integration of teaching storytelling and weather together," UW-Madison science professor Steve Ackerman said.

Blending science and storytelling should create the best of both worlds, organizers said bringing humanity to hard facts and an increased rigor to the narrative arts. And the topic of weather is a great vehicle to do both, they said.

"The weather is such an all-pervasive kind of phenomenon out there in the world," said James Leary, a folklore professor. "People talk about the weather in their every-day life, they tell weather-related stories and they use weather metaphors."

What's more, some weather stories, especially those that chronicle severe events such as blizzards and tornadoes, include elements of heroism and tragedy worthy of literature. One of the project's K-12 participants, Russ Bailey, a 7th grade science teacher from Northwestern Middle School in Poplar, told Leary a story about being a commercial fisherman.

On time, Bailey recalled, a storm blew up suddenly on Lake Superior late in the fishing season, and as the temperature dropped, ice began to form rapidly around his boat, creating a hazardous condition. Because Bailey was the youngest fisherman on board, he was chosen to go out on the deck and break up the ice while the boat knocked around wildly in the storm.

"If he hadn't done that, they would have been in grave danger," Leary said. "That's partly a story about rapidly changing weather conditions and the science of that, and it's also about a kind of initiation, a coming-of-age, heroic story about a young person's experience."

Telling a weather story also requires including some of the key steps in doing science, such as observation, analysis, and hypothesis or prediction, Ackerman said.

Over the next school year, the K-12 teachers in the project will field-test lesson plans in the proposed weather curriculum developed at UW-Madison by students in atmospheric science and folklore.

"They are our test-pilot teachers," said Kris Karnauskas, a senior majoring in atmospheric science. "They'll document their experiences."

The lessons cover three types of weather stories: severe weather, common weather sayings - like "Wind from the west, fish bite best," - and occupational stories about those who work with weather. The teachers also plan to collect weather stories of their own from students, families and local weather experts in their community, adding those to the Web site as well.

The project was funded by a $28,359 grant from a UW-Madison endowment fund.