The Teachers on the Bay program has always been strongly supported by Northern Neck Audubon. And for good reason: chapter member Bill Portlocck does much more than teach school teachers about marine ecology.  He instills a love for the subject and develops enthusiasm so that teachers go back to their students with the confidence and skills needed to develop lessons and to lead field trips using materials and resources supplied in his course.  For two weeks, teachers stay at St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock.  Yes, there is classroom instruction, but more often these graduate students will be found canoeing in a salt marsh, wading in a swamp, conducting and analyzing tests aboard a research vessel, in or on the small Fox Island field station in the middle of the Chesapeake.

It is exciting to see Bill's enthusiasm for teaching and for ecology transmitted to his class and to imagine all the future students of these teachers who will benefit from this program.  For this reason we have contributed $6750 for some of the operating costs, materials, and equipment.  We have also provided scholarships for three local teachers:

• Shawna Gilbert, teacher of marine biology at Washington and Lee High School
• Millie Moncure who teaches environmental science at St. Margaret's
• Sharon Reynolds, marine biology teacher at Essex High School

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