John Magee

Magee’s innovative teaching idea, “Survival of the Hairiest!”, is focused on growing Wisconsin fast plants in order to teach students the process of natural selection. The students in Magee’s biology class will watch the plants grow from seeds to fully mature plants. They will cross-pollinate the “hairiest plants” in the population, and will continue to select and regrow the seeds from these plants over the whole school year – representing how this process takes place over time. For many students, this will be the first time they have the opportunity to see the full life cycle of a plant, from seed to seed. With the grant, Magee’s goal is to purchase a set of Chromebooks and Vernier probeware – a new generation of high-tech instruments for collecting and analyzing data on temperature, motion, gas pressure, light, and other characteristics, allowing students to investigate photosynthesis, analyze respiration rates in the plants, and collect data on the hairiest plants throughout the process.