Fall in love with the ocean with Carrie Carlin
Carrie Carlin
Science Teacher
Atlee High School
Mechanicsville, Virginia
Winner of the 2019 Johnette D. Bosarge Memorial Award
Growing up I thought that I would be living at the beach and working at an aquarium. I never imagined that I would be teaching Oceanography at the same high school I graduated from. I have come to appreciate how I can share my passion for the ocean with my landlocked students. To watch them grow to appreciate how vital the ocean is and how it affects our daily lives is why I teach. My students not only learn facts and information, but they apply these in a hands on approach. My students analyze real world data from Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the BRIDGE. Through my involvement with the Mid-Atlantic Marine Education Association (MAMEA), I've had the opportunity to meet other marine science educators. They have shared their ideas and lessons that I have been able to incorporate into my classroom. From these relationships, I have been able to feature guest speakers from the Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (CBNERR) to share with my students the diversity of the Chesapeake Bay. I take my students whale watching to see the diversity of life that can be found in our oceans. Mostly, I hope that my enthusiasm for the ocean and continuous learning rubs off on my students and they carry that through their lives.
Setting up the 2018 MAMEA conference in Portsmouth, Virginia.
Carrie’s son, JP, dressed up as a fish for Halloween.
Carrie fell in love with the ocean when she was very young. Her mother always said that she was the child that ran into the ocean while others ran away. While in graduate school, she found her passion for teaching marine science. She has had the privilege of teaching Oceanography, Earth Science, Biology and AP Biology for the last fifteen years in the same county she grew up in.
