Indoor river is teaching tool for summer school students

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LYNCHBURG, Va. (AP) — Grain by grain, sediment began to build up in the reservoir behind the tiny dam, as anticipation built on the faces of the high school students watching.

Diana Duckworth, a teacher with the Summer Residential Governor's School Program in Mathematics, Science and Technology had a model river rigged up in her classroom at Lynchburg College. A hose pipe provided the water, which wound up in the sink at the end of its run. Connected metal channels provided a sloping path for the flow.

Duckworth's dam was a simple kitchen sponge, with a little cut-out on top made to resemble a spillway on a real dam.

Alex Hughes, of Mannassas, poured sandy sediment into the river upstream, which formed a delta behind the dam.

Hughes is one of 156 high school students from around the state participating in the residential governor's school program. Students pick one class and take it six days a week for a month — but not for high school or college credit. There are also field trips such as visiting the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville and Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Options for classes this year included offerings such as "Tales from the Genome: What Will Your Future Bring?" and "Water, Water, Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Drink," which is Duckworth's class.

"I want to be an environmental engineer, so this was the most related class to that major," Hughes said. "And I really like water. Water is my specialty."

Duckworth gave a pseudo-stern warning to her students, as she prepared to remove the dam.

"Now what you are going to want do is watch down there," she said, pantomiming a student who might swivel to watch a surge of water careen downriver once the dam was released. "Don't do that! The action is here."

She indicated instead the edge of the sediment delta, beneath the water in the reservoir. "I want to know what happens to that little steep slope when I remove the dam," she said, asking the students if they were ready. "One, two . don't blink . three!"

Obediently, they kept their eyes on the delta, and watched the leading edge of the sediment delta shift upstream, as the water flooded downstream out from the reservoir. The effect wasn't flashy, but it still elicited "ooohs" from some of the students.

"That's called headward erosion," Duckworth said.

Duckworth, a retired Rustburg High School science teacher who teaches classes sometimes at Lynchburg and Randolph colleges, is a long-time veteran instructor at the summer residential governor's school.

She's passionate about teaching about both physics concepts and environmental issues in the class.

"I personally think water is the most important issue in the 21st century," she said.

Some of the aspects she likes about teaching at the Governor's school are the freedom to teach what she wants and the lack of tests for the students. There are assignments, she said, and she writes an evaluation for each student, but there are no grades, and she thinks that frees up the students to take risks in learning they might not otherwise.

"These kids are awesome," she said. "It's the best of what education can be."

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Information from: The News & Advance, http://www.newsadvance.com/