About Me

This is my 9th year teaching at CGHS. This job has been the most challenging and the most fun of all the jobs I have ever had, and I've had many. I started off washing pots and peeling potatoes for a fish and chips shop during my high school experience and have also been a sales clerk, pesticide applicator, research intern, traveling salesman, university researcher, and industrial researcher. My education includes all the possible degrees studying biology, chemistry, pest management, agriculture, horticulture, ecology, and statistics. I do many hours of community service with PCA, Friends of the Petaluma River, Petaluma Wetlands Alliance, and a local church. I have a wife of 24 years and 2 children attending college.

One of my current major projects is managing the Casa Grande Native Plant Nursery located by the baseball diamond in the back 40 of the campus. 

Homework

Extra Credit: Physical Science

The most popular extra credit activity is watching science/science fiction based movies. Students need to know the difference between good and bad science. The assessment is a 1-page write up with a paragraph on the good science and a paragraph on the bad science presented in the movie. Some movies have more fiction and some have more biography and solid foundations. All these moves are blockbusters, academy nominees, and/or 3-4 star ratings. Each movie is worth 10 pts. and a maximum of 1 movie/week and 5 movies/semester. Some TV series can also apply.

11th Hour (not Eleventh Hour) (Hollywood style documentary on Global Warming)

Apollo 13 (follow up with research into the Challenger accident)

Armageddon (more story and excitement then Deep Impact, less science)

Assent of Man (TV series from the 60’s, also a book)

Contact (follow up with research on SETI)

Core (first half good science, second half bad science)

Deep Impact (better than Armageddon for science presentation)

Good Eats (TV series, Alton Brown does Mr. Wizard with food)

Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore gives a warming lecture) 

Journey to the Center of the Earth (old version only)

Jurassic Park I (look for earth science concepts, not just biology)

Manufactured Landscapes (relationship between modern industry and nature)

March of the Penguins (Documentary of the yearly migration)

Marvelous Marvels (TV series, big machines)

Mythbusters (only certain episodes count - ask teacher) 

Planet Earth (new digital series, especially the “how they did it” extras)

Perfect Storm (based on true story, but fictionalized in the drama) 

Rivers and Tides (documentary of artistic environmental photo journal)

Technology News (TV series)

The Day After (Nuclear War reduces the world to despair)

The Day After Tomorrow (Global Warming disaster: starts factual, ends fictional) 

The Endurance (documentary on early Antarctica expedition that failed)

The Right Stuff (3 hour epic on the beginning of human space flight)

Twister (follow up with research on real tornado watchers)

Who Killed the Electric Car (documentary on the EV-1) 

Winged Migration (documentary of birds extraordinary flights)

Others – check with the teacher to see if your movie counts

Extra work can be done out of the book that is not part of the regular assignments such as math practice problems, section reviews, and chapter reviews. See the teacher to develop appropriate, individualized assignments.

Doing a web quest and report on a major subject and going deeper than the class curriculum. Examples are: nuclear power, water resources in California, Newton’s Laws, black holes, climate change, etc.

Home experiments with a Science Fair format. Create your own Science Fair Project. Enter it into the county contest if it is good enough.

Read a book about science, scientists, or science based fiction and write a short report about what you learned and how the book is related to what we are learning in class. For example: The physics of baseball, The Universe according to Stephen Hawking, The Physics of Star Trek, etc., Contact, Galileo’s Daughter.

Investigate a new hobby and find out the science behind it. I have many hobbies and interests that seem to continuously change and expand including: video production, biking, kayaking, cooking, music, sustainability, alternative energy, horticulture, and habitat restoration. Every hobby has a strong base in science, especially “How does it work?” I have study articles on making candy and the chromatic music scale that are ready for interested students.

Links

Grades Page:

http://home.comcast.net/~jshribbs/grades/classes.htm

Gallery

Casa Grande Native Plant Nursery

Open House and Work Party

Thursdays 3:30 to 5 pm

We are celebrating the recent expansion that now includes drip irrigation pads. In September 2008, we had over 4000 plants in inventory.We had 3000 plants in 2007 and 2000 in 2006.

You can come by on Thursdays 3-5 pm to visit and/or volunteer.

We have seeds to plant. trees to transplant, and pots to wash. 

 On the weekends in the winter, we plant natives at Shollenberger Park, Alman Marsh, and other local habitats with volunteers from the Petaluma Wetlands Alliance.

For more pictures, go to the Gallery page