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- Larry Flammer retired in1997 from Del Mar High School, in the Campbell Union High School District, San Jose, California, where he taught mostly "honors" level biology to juniors and seniors for 38 years. Shortly after his "retirement", he built the ENSI web site, a collection of lessons that were collected, developed, and tested by ENSI teachers. He offered to do this, so that this excellent collection, and the philosophy behind it, would not be lost to future teachers, and he could apply much of his now available time to the topics he considers most important in biology teaching: evolution and the nature of science. Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Jean Beard of San Jose State University, the NSF grant for the ENSI program was extended to include some compensation to Larry for his time on this project. - Larry was born in Los Angeles, California in 1934, and moved to Humboldt County in northern California at age 11. He finished high school in Eureka, California, spent a year in Los Angeles, starting a major in chemical engineering at the University of Southern California, but decided to switch to biology, so he returned to northern California, and continued his college work at Humboldt State University. While there, he headed an amazing committee which created Humboldt's first Frosh Camp, and he was elected Student Body President. He received his B.A. in zoology in 1956, then went to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he received his M.S. in zoology, with original work on brachiopod embryology and evolution, working at Friday Harbor, with Dixie Lee Ray and Robert L. Fernald. - Returning to Humboldt State, he earned his teaching credential, then began work in the Campbell Union High School District 1n 1959. In addition to biology, he also taught physical anthropology in adult education for several years, computer programming, physical science, and earth science. While teaching at Del Mar HS, he led many goups of students on educational trips to the local tidepools, Death Valley, Yosemite Institute, and Hawaii. During most of those years, he was Science Department Chair, and also served as District Science Supervisor for a few years, until supervisors were phased out by the district. Larry has been honored with two mentor teacher awards, and two Excellence in Teaching awards (from the Campbell High School District, and the Metropolitan Adult Education district). - Over the years, he received additional training in Harry Wong's Teacher Institute (Stanford, 1965), the AEC Radiation Biology Institute at the University of Washington, local geology of California, computer programming, Fast-Plants / Bottle-Biology training, and the ENSI program at San Jose State University. He also participated in the Recombinant DNA Training program by David Micklos, offered jointly by UC Davis and Cold Spring Harbor, the Bio-Ethics Symposium at UC Santa Cruz, and the series of Bio-Forums offered over several years by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. The ENSI program ran from 1989 to 1992 at Indiana University, then moved to San Jose State Univ. from 1992-1995. Larry joined the program in 1992. After special "Lead Teacher" training in the ENSI program, he team-taught with Tim Patterson of Redwood City in the SENSI program for three years (95-97). - Larry helped establish the Santa Clara County Biotechnology - Education Partnership (SCCBEP), providing teacher training and rotating sets of professional lab equipment so high school students could carry out various biotechnology protocols. He also worked with Queue/HRM Software in the 1980s as one of their education consultants, demonstrating computer-based labware at conventions and workshops. - As an IISME fellow (Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Educators), he has written computer guidelines for the former Syntex Corporation, and worked with data base and library materials for the Space Station project with Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. During the early 90s, he did freelance writing for a biology text teachers' guide for Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. He was also an early reviewer for Prentice-Hall's newBiology text by Miller & Levine, and for a general science text. - In addition to sharing his love of learning and discovery with his students, he also enjoys the challenging opportunities in teaching to create new and effective ways of clarifying difficult concepts. For example, in the 1960s he created an intgrated series of lessons to help students visualize and understand DNA structure and function, which he has used ever since (see his "Do It Yourself DNA Kit."). Also, in the 1970s, he gathered and developed materials for a text supplement booklet on The Limits of Science, in which students examined the many misconceptions about science, including what science is NOT, as well what it IS, primarily to establish the proper scientific context in which evolution could be effectively taught, and where "creation science" would have no proper place. This turned out to anticipate much of the philosophy and content of the ENSI program, so his involvement in ENSI is a very natural one. This Limit of Science booklet formed the basis of his new text supplement booklet Science Surprises (which see below). - In 2000-2001, Larry was asked to develop interactive lessons for the new website being built professionaly for Don Johanson's Institute of Human Origins,. The lessons submitted (along with lessons developed by ENSI colleague John Banister-Marx) are now available on the Becoming Human site. Click on "Learning Center" then on Larry's "Chromosome Connection" (or one of the other activities, by John). "Lesson Plans" contains downloadable pages for clasroom use. See the ENSI lesson "Chromosome Connection 2" for an updated version, or a more structured version that uses a forensic science approach to this most compelling evidence for human-ape common ancestry, with multiple lines of evidence: Mystery of the Matching Marks. - In the Summer of 2001, Larry wrote some lessons, adapted other lessons, and reviewed other materials for the WGBH/PBS-Evolution project, mostly for their Teacher's Guide and the Online Course for Teachers. Their 7-part TV series on Evolution aired September, 2001. Many of the activities and lessons in their program came from the teachers of the ENSI project. - In 2003, Larry joined a team of veteran and retired science teachers in a new NSF-funded program designed to mentor new science teachers online. This eMSS program involves the collaboration of NSTA, UC-Santa Cruz, and Montana State University. The mentors are still receiving online training in the Summer, and currently (2008-09) mentor new teachers in 8 states during the school year. Larry also received special mentor training and accepted a job mentoring 5 novice science teachers face-to-face in their first year at a new local high school, gaining excellent experience. - In March, 2006, Larry's "Evolution Solution" article was published in The American Biology Teacher (online), presenting a novel but very effective approach for embedding evolution and the nature of science in a biology course - an approach he used sussceesfully for many years. - In 2007, Larry was asked to write a lesson for WGBH to be offered to teachers with the airing of a new NOVA program: Judgment Day - Intelligent Design On Trial. He adapted his "Chromosome Fusion" lesson to create that Judgment Day activity, then developed a PowerPoint version, with a CSI approach, called Mystery of the Matching Marks. He also helped Science Kit / Boreal Labs devlop a commercial kit version ("Evolution of Whales") of his "Becoming Whales" and "Whale Ankles and DNA" lessons. - In 2008, Larry added a lesson intended primarily for middle school classes: Patterns in Time. It provides a novel scale for geologic time that relates directly to the ages of the students, giving them a more realistic sense of deep time than most scales do. It also makes them vividly aware of the fact that the different major classes of vertebrates emerged independently in step-wise fashion over many tens of millions of years, with each successive group showing features modified from preious groups, thus helping to dispell the popular misconception that the major forms of life all emerged at once, in the mythical "Cambrian Explosion." -2010-2012: Larry is currntly adapting his Limits of Science text supplement as a booklet for students in any science class. Tentative title: Science Surprises. The surprises are the many misconceptions people have about science. Students will encounter them as they read the booklet. The booklet will provide a context and resource for students as their teacher leads them through a series of Nature of Science lessons available on the ENSI site, giving them experiences with the many important aspects of science that are typically omitted from most textbooks. Field testing of the unit (by some 22 middle school and high school teachers) has been largely completed (as of November, 2012). Their feedback and pre/post test results will inform a rewrite of the booklet and Teacher Guide, which will be re-submitted for peer review and publication by the NSTA Press, hopefully in early 2013. As time allows, Larry manages to do workshops on ENSI lessons at science teacher conventions when they are held nearby (San Francisco Bay Area), and works with local science teachers to present selected lessons to get student and teacher feedback. - He does manage to keep busy! |