Teacher Professional Development

The slender, scaly, legless form of snakes is familiar to all, but not everything that looks like a snake is really a snake. Through convergent evolution, many other distantly related animals have arrived at remarkably similar forms. Why are there so many...

Frogs are an amazingly diverse group of animals. How did all this diversity arise? We will explore this question by looking at the physical characteristics of frogs drawn from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology Herpetology Collection. After looking...

Advance Registration Required. Join us from your couch or your classroom for an introduction to our virtual programs for school groups at the Harvard Museums of Science & Culture. We will provide short demonstrations of actual classes and provide answers...

Tuesday, August 17 and Thursday, August 19, 2021; 8:30 am–12:30 pm, outdoors in person at the Arboretum (Boston) with optional lunch and discussion to follow Wednesday, August 18; 8:30 am–12:30 pm virtual on Zoom This program is intended for teachers of...

Intended for middle school and high school educators Participants will use observations and data collection from Harvard Herbarium specimens, and associated climate data, to see phenological change over 200 years. Specimens will include plants collected...

Explore the relationship between climate change and the time of first bloom in plants using field data collected by scientists and naturalists and data collected from observations of dried herbarium specimens over 160 years. This lesson is suitable for...

Intended for middle school educators Using 3D-printed models of frog specimens from the Museum of Comparative Zoology collections, participants will explore the concepts of heredity, variation, survival and adaptations. This program will cover the same...

Intended for high school educators Through careful inspection and data collection using digital images of Museum of Comparative Zoology specimens, and analysis of phylogenies, participants will explore the concept of convergent evolution in legless...

December 5 (Saturday) 9:00 am–12:00 pm or December 9 and 10 (Wednesday and Thursday) 3:30–5:00 pm Middle School Educators, may be suitable for High School Educators Through careful inspection and data collection using digital images of Museum of...

The story of horse evolution is a textbook example of evolution through natural selection. How and why did these animals change over time? Using visual images, 3D-printed fossil horse teeth, and vegetation and climate data, participants will examine the...