Local teachers will leave today for a field trip of their own.

Twenty-two Oklahoma teachers will spend a week traveling along the Arkansas River, studying the hydrologic, environmental and cultural issues impacting it.

Local institute participants are Hal Clary of Noble, Teresa Potter and Tricia Strouhal of Moore and Mark Stahl and Joshua Weitzel of Norman.

The professional development institute is meant to enable teachers to incorporate geology into their classrooms and bring what they learn back to their students, said Gary Gress, a geography teacher at Norman High School who also is the coordinator of the Oklahoma Alliance of Geographic Education (OKAGE). OKAGE, an outreach organization at the University of Oklahoma, will host the field expedition.

Participants will begin their expedition at the University of Oklahoma and continue to the headwaters of the Arkansas River by way of Kaw Lake in Oklahoma; Garden City, Kan.; as well as Pueblo, Buena Vista and Leadville, Colo., Gress said.

Participants will learn from Army Corps of Engineers staff, conservation district managers and United States Geological Survey experts, he said.

In addition to the personal enrichment of the teachers, the goal of the field trip is for the teachers to teach their students about what they've learned.

"The goal is to write a unit lesson or series of lessons about rivers," Gress said. The lessons will be published in print and on the OKAGE Web site so others can use the information as well, he said.

Julianna Parker Jones 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com

On the Net

www.okageweb.org