Teacher's 'CSI' Program Up For National Award

SEVEN SPRINGS, Fla. -- It's a never-ending mystery, and no matter how many times the case is cracked, it has to be forever re-opened.

What new ways can teachers find to get through to their students? Especially nowadays, when there are so many things competing for children's attention; video games, the Internet - even their telephones are sources of entertainment. And of course there's the mother distraction of them all - television.

Teacher Wendy Hauver, formerly in the English Department at Seven Springs Middle School, came up with an innovative way to beat the electronic Cyclops at its own game. Her idea uses one of the most popular TV franchises going as inspiration for a program she devised to engage her students.

For her efforts, Hauver is and her "CSI Writing Program" is one of only two teachers in the Tampa Bay area and 44 nationwide nominated for this year's Cable's Leaders in Learning award.

The awards are presented by Cable in the Classroom, founded in 1989 as the cable industry's education foundation. The awards promote and encourage innovative learning practices using the media and its technology.

"I can't believe I'm a finalist for this competition," Hauver said. "I was looking at what some of the teachers did last year. There was this lady who took her students to Panama, they lived with tribes. I'm like, 'how am I in with these people?' "

In the spirit

While she didn't risk malaria, Hauver's program was decidedly in the spirit of the awards. She put together a descriptive writing program for seventh graders modeled after the CBS crime dramas "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and its spinoffs, "CSI: Miami" and "CSI: NY."

"I thought, let's take something they know really well and turn into something really fun for them," Hauver said.

On the CSI shows, forensic scientists study clues to solve crimes. Hauver designed her program so the students would do the same, at the same time working on their reading and writing skills, not to mention things like paying attention to detail, deductive reasoning and teamwork.

She also set it up so that the students could use their senses of sight, hearing and touch.

To immediately get the kids into the assignment, Hauver began the unit with a "swearing-in" ceremony before a photo of "CSI: Miami" star David Caruso, which remained up for the remainder of the unit. The students worked together in "forensic teams" and wore latex gloves when they handled "evidence,"

Hauver created a series of props - a golf shoe with grass in the cleats and "blood" around the edges, a bouquet of dried up flowers and a bottle containing a mysterious substance.

"It was actually soy sauce, oil, water and corn starch," she said. The students' task was to give a detailed report on what their team noticed about each of the pieces of evidence.

Later, they listened to an audio tape Hauver created from stock sound effects. Again, the assignment was to notice as much detail as they could and make a case from it. Students could write their report as a literary piece or as a police report.

For another part of the CSI program, Hauver found a deposition online that had been given in a real-life murder case that took place in Fort DeSoto Park, in southern Pinellas County.

"As far as I know, the case has never been solved."

Split into teams

Again, the students were split up into teams to study the transcripts, an exercise in reading comprehension.

"They had to pick out details and find information in there that was paramount to their case," Hauver said. "The deposition was an exercise in reading for clues, paying attention to what was said and trying to find holes in it, because you don't want holes in your writing."

Though there was an element of playacting in her CSI Writing Program, there was serious work being done.

"The whole time, they were writing," Hauver said. "They were taking copious notes on what they were observing and they had to come to a consensus, they had to make inferences and draw conclusions."

There is so much hand-wringing over the emphasis on the FCAT tests these days, Hauver feels it is more important when it comes to reading and writing that students know how to use the tools.

"Because you never know what passages are going to be in there," she said. "They need be able to take any piece of information in front of them and basically do CSI diagnostics on them. They need to be able to take it apart in a fast and effective way in order to answer questions in 60 minutes."

Even before her award nomination, Hauver's creativity was rewarded. Back in October, Hauver accepted a new position, traveling throughout the district presenting what she calls "preventive programs."

"I do primarily binge drinking - maybe I should rephrase that," she said with a laugh. "I create programs for drug and alcohol prevention, DUI and pharmaceutical drug prevention."

Next: bullying

She is now putting together an anti-bullying campaign for late grade school students, trying to stem the problem before it matures.

Her "CSI" program, however, hasn't been relegated to the cold case files. Last summer she presented it to other teachers at an annual districtwide workshop.

Hauver said she would be "shocked and amazed" if she won the award.

Win or lose, she gave credit to former Seven Springs Middle School Principal Christopher Christoff. He "was 100 percent supportive every harebrained idea I ever came up with in the four and a half years I worked with him," Hauver said of Christoff.

Christoff is now principal of Crews Lake Middle School, which scheduled to open in August.

If she should win, Hauver will get a $3,000 prize and an all-expenses paid trip to Washington, D.C., in June. The awards will be presented at the Library of Congress.

While the prospect is exciting, Hauver isn't losing sleep over it. She's happy enough with the satisfaction she quietly takes every day.

"I never really think of this as my job," she said. "I just think of it as what I do."