Science students no doubt have heard of the Madagascar hissing cockroach.

It's not the stuff of science fiction. It's just one of 200 creatures at the Utica Zoo, which has a teacher education program that's as active as, say, its Siberian tiger.

Zoo staff work with professors and teacher ed students from Mohawk Valley Community College and the State University of New York at Oneonta to create teacher resource boxes loaded with lesson plans on environmental topics and specimens.

These are built "to go:" think zoo drive-thru. Teachers can pick up a prepared box kit, use it in class and return it. Lesson plans cover such topics as endangered species, oceans and North American animals. Kits come with laminated lesson plans, activity cards, children's books, card games and physical specimens such as starfish.

Carolyn Chryst, a member of United University Professions at SUNY Oneonta, is an assistant professor who arranges the zoo ed program.

She manages the small teacher prep program for grades 1-6. It is located at Mohawk Valley Community College and run by SUNY Oneonta. The 2-plus-2 program offers MVCC graduates a seamless transfer into the SUNY Oneonta program, while remaining primarily at the community college.

Seniors from Chryst's science methods class prepare the loan boxes - evaluating materials, creating inventory sheets and writing lesson plans cross-referenced with the state standards for science and math.

In the insect box, for example, they made lessons that could be used around Halloween. Food webs, to show where the spider fits into the food chain, can be built with string by the whole class.

In the bird box to go, lessons focus on bird tracking. Imprints found in snow or mud and illustrated in the plans show that three toes forward and one toe back are perching birds, like robins. Two toes forward and two back are birds that tend to climb, like woodpeckers, Chryst said.

Tools found in the kitchen are used to ask questions: Can you tell what kind of food a bird eats by its beak? Scissors illustrate birds whose jaws work at a cross angle, like hawks and eagles, to grind. Nutcrackers can demonstrate beaks that are used for cracking nuts.

Chryst combined her education, classroom knowledge and previous experience as a curator of education at the Toledo Zoo to have the project take flight. In Toledo, she worked with a local university to have master teachers build educational kits.

"It's a community service, but to me, one of the values is the authenticity of the lesson plans," she said.

In collaboration with the Utica Teachers Center, the zoo hosted a professional development day this spring for teachers.

The 30-acre zoo has a Zoomobile to speed to schools with critters-to-go. It won't accommodate the zoo's camel or its California sea lions, but it can carry frogs as part of "Rainforest romp," raptors for a "Native tails" program or "Spineless wonders" (invertebrates).

The Zoo to You program, also available for community groups, comes with an educator in tow.

Talking on the phone over a macaw's squawk, zoo assistant Meg Faville said, "It's about utilizing the zoo as a local resource and being able to open up more collaborative efforts with teachers."

Check www.uticazoo.org for photos of their snow leopards, snowy owls or other residents.

- Liza Frenette