Lee's school-based mosquito education program promotes health

Staring into the eyes of an adolescent crawfish made Faith Gereaux-Grieg’s skin crawl.

“Its eyes. It’s just so creepy,” said the Heights Elementary School fifth grader, who pushed herself back from her desk and away from the lobster-like crustacean moving around in a lab jar.

While she didn’t like looking at the little creature, she knew it played an important role in the local ecosystem and food chain.

And that’s something she and her peers in Kristina Mintz’s classroom were learning about Wednesday as part of a weeklong program offered by the Lee County Mosquito Control District’s education program.

The program dates back to 1987, when Sanibel School teacher Neil Wilkinson was recruited by the mosquito control district to talk to students about mosquito biology, mosquito control and disease prevention.

The program has since expanded, and now boasts of an internship program, assistant teachers and three main instructors — Wilkinson, now a professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and two instructors who are based out of the Lee County school district: Brian Murphy and Eric Jackson.

Although it is totally voluntary for schools to participate, the program works with students in kindergarten, fifth grade, seventh grade and high school biology and chemistry classes. In all, the program is taught in about 600 classrooms each year, and a waiting list shows that more schools are wanting to tap into the project.

“I think most students who go through the Lee County school system know something about mosquitoes, and not just from being outside and being around mosquitoes, but also because it has been an integral part of the curriculum in the school district for 30 years,” said Jackson, who was spending his week at Heights Elementary.

The outreach takes place in weeklong segments, in which teachers prepare their kids for what they are going to learn from their guest teachers, who spend Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the schoolhouse.

“We come in and we teach the students about the ecology of where mosquitoes grow,” Jackson said. “We talk about their biology — how they grow with the life cycle, and then we are going to relate that to the standards that teachers are already teaching in the classroom.”

The program covers also the problems that occur when the mosquito population gets out of control, and how the insects can spread diseases, like Dengue fever, Chikungunya and the Zika virus.

The goal here is not to scare the kids, but to promote staying healthy.

Harry Chapin handing out mosquito repellent to fight Zika

“Depending on the level, we’re going to change how in depth we go as to what the diseases actually do to the human body, the history of it, how it was spread, the mortality rate, stuff like that,” Jackson said. “But the important thing, especially at the fifth-grade level, and even younger, even in kindergarten, is we go in and talk about how we don’t want to get bitten by a mosquito because we don’t want them to make us sick.”

While Wednesday’s session wasn’t supposed to delve too deep into the spread of viruses or diseases, it was ever-present on the kids’ minds.

As students were learning how to tell the difference between a male and female mosquito, one fifth grader mentioned the irritation people feel when they have been bitten, which often comes with a bump and steady itch.

Rhiannon Forry, a Florida Gulf Coast University senior and student teacher in the mosquito control program, explained briefly how that happens.

“When a mosquito puts its proboscis into you, it does spit into your skin and that’s what causes the irritation and the bump — it’s that bacteria that they have in their saliva, and that’s also how we get the diseases," she said.

“Weird,” one of the students said, followed by another who shook her head and said, “That’s disgusting.”

“Mosquitoes are weird, and it is disgusting. And that’s why we have to protect ourselves from it,” Forry said.

And the best way to do that is to be vigilant around your home, Jackson said.

“When it comes to viruses like the Zika virus or even Dengue fever or Chikungunya, which a couple years ago Chikungunya virus was a big thing, it’s the same method to help stop it. And that is to educate the public to clean up around their houses,” he said.

The mosquito that carries the Zika virus, for example, is called Aedes aegypti and only flies 300 yards in its life.

“So it is a neighborhood by neighborhood situation — street by street,” Jackson said. “So if you can get everyone on your street to cleanup, you eliminate the possibility of being bitten by that mosquito, or help to eliminate it.”

The war on mosquitoes in Lee County

And that’s really the whole purpose behind the program, he said, adding that when students learn how to protect themselves, they will go home and tell their families.

“It’s not just using insecticides or other biological controls, education has to be part of a program, and the Lee County Mosquito Control District chooses to use this version of an education program to do that.”

Connect with this reporter: @NP_pstaik (Twitter).