by editor | Jul 31, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
What is your current job title?
I am a Conservation Educator at MK Nature Center for Idaho Department of Fish and Game. That means I teach classes at the Nature Center for about 10,000 students annually. Most of our crowd is prek-3rd graders. I do that ¾ time. My other job title for 1/4th of my time, is the Idaho Master Naturalist Program Coordinator. The IMNP is a state wide program that I coordinate. It is an adult education and volunteer program.
How did you get into this field?
Well, I probably was born to do this. My parents were both elementary school teachers and I kind of fought that path a little, though my talents are kind of a fit for that. I have also always loved camping and wildlife and plants and being outside….so I went into Recreation Management in college and ended up focusing on Interpretation. I had some jobs that I loved after college and before I went to graduate school that were related. I was a Wilderness Ranger and Firefighter and Interpreter. Then I attended the Teton Science Schools’ Professional Residency in Environmental Education for a year and finished my Master’s degree at University of Idaho in the Conservation Social Science Program. I landed the Watchable Wildlife Program Coordinator job at Idaho Department of Fish and Game and did that for three years before they offered me a job teaching. I loved the Watchable Wildlife job, but at the chance to do more teaching….I jumped in!
What are you working on right now?
Right now I am welcoming two new graduate students from Boise State University to their year as teachers at MK Nature Center. They come to us through the GK-12 program funded by the National Science Foundation. The program puts scientists into the classroom and in our case, the scientists are put into our nature center. This is our third year of the program and it has been fun to coach these young, energetic, biology and hydrology students to teach preschool students about cactus or crayfish or the water cycle. It takes me out of the classroom a little, but it sure helps me think about teaching from another perspective! Just like when I have to learn about salmon and teach it…I have to think about teaching and then teach IT.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I love taking a topic and making it into a program. I suppose you might call that curriculum design or lesson planning. I love thinking about who my audience and figuring out what they already know….so I can create something new and stick it to what they know. I get to do a lot of that with my job, so that is great! I love it because I get to research something and learn it myself first. So for example today when I was teaching our FUN WITH FUNGUS class. The kids were not sure if fungus was an animal or plant or neither. We got into quite a fun discussion about Spongebob Squarepants!
If you could change anything about your work, what would it be?
It sounds kind of idealistic, but I have a lot of ideas that I feel cannot come to fruition because of barriers that are beyond my control. Policy or money or staff levels. I am pretty creative and can work through some of those barriers, but sometimes it is not realistic to take the time to make something happen. Thankfully, my ideas still keep coming, so I am not letting these barriers stop me from dreaming big.
Do you have any advice for someone starting out in this field?
I always advise new environmental educators to get a lot of broad experiences. If they can volunteer here and there, that is the best way to get to know people and get experience. Also, I encourage folks to learn about graphic design and fundraising. These are two skills I dabble in, but for which I have no formal training. I really could be more effective in my job if I were better at these things. I always find myself telling new teachers here at the Nature Center that enthusiasm is the most important aspect of a program. You don’t have to know all the answers. You don’t have to be funny and have perfect teaching skills all the time….but enthusiasm is a must. Kids will love what they do here if they see you loving what you do!
Where do you find inspiration for the work you do?
Oh, I have no lack of inspiration! I am inspired by the kids who come to the Nature Center. They are so curious and energetic and enthusiastic. In fact, today I was feeling kind of lethargic and I did not really feel I had the energy to teach, but I did and those kids really turned my mood around. In no time I was totally into the program that I have taught probably 600 times. My co-workers really inspire me. We are all a bunch of nature lovers and it is so fun to come to work and talk about it all day long. I am completely inspired by nature…that sounds awfully cliché, but it is true. As an example, we got this new book at our gift shop and I was just thumbing through it and learned that snakes eat eggs (which I knew), and then they spit out the shells (which I did not know). I love what I know, but I really love what I don’t know and what I find out. It seems like every day, something blows me away! It could be the rose wasp that makes these crazy Dr. Seuss-looking puffy galls or the kid who asks how long it takes a mushroom spore to die!
What is your favorite resource or tool for teaching about nature?
Well, the environment, of course! The spider who spins his web between two branches next to the bridge so I can throw an ant in his web and we can watch it wrap it up for lunch. The ants who wreck our pavers and prefer goldfish crackers over licorice (I know this because of our ant experiments). The fawns who get scared when we walk down the path and run to their mom to nurse right in front of a clan of 1st graders. Or that teeny tiny jumping spider who had a mayfly in its mouth! I did not know they carried them around in their mouths like that.
Where do you go when you want to recharge your batteries?
That is really a funny question because I occasionally complain to my husband that I miss nature and he says, “but you work at a NATURE CENTER!” It is kind of ironic! But I am a former Wilderness Ranger and need that backcountry experience with solitude! I don’t get that much anymore, since I have little kids, but heck, car camping along a Forest Service road (no campgrounds please) does the trick. We go camping a lot.
What is your favorite place to visit in the Pacific Northwest?
I love the Sawtooth Mountains. I lived there and worked there for many years and it feels so much like home. Besides that area, I also love the Cascades and wish I could visit there more often. I worked at Mount St. Helens for a summer and just love the plants and geology and all those elk!
Who do you consider your environmental hero?
I have quite a few people who have influenced me along the way, but my grandmother always stands out as someone who has influenced me the most. My grandmother spent her adult life during the depression. Her lifestyle was more associated with her economic situation than an environmental decision. Nonetheless, she was an avid gardener, sewer, and homemaker. They did not waste anything! I remember vividly a time when I was sitting at her kitchen table. In the middle of the table, on top of the lace tablecloth, was a tray with toothpicks, room temperature butter, home-made jam, and napkins. On this particular day, there was a small strip of dark green fabric on the tray. I picked it up and asked my grandmother what it was. She told me she had been sewing grandpa’s pants….taking them in and that was a belt loop that came off his pants. I asked her why it was on the table and she said because she might use it for something. She totally would have used it too! She made everything and wasted nothing. I really long for a lifestyle where I could be more like her!
Sara Focht receiving the IdEEA Non-Formal Environmental Educator of the Year award at the 2012 IdEEA Conference.
Are you optimistic about the future?
I am! I know that I live and work in a nature bubble. My friends and co-workers are all pretty environmentally conscious. We ride our bikes and recycle and buy local food. We get our kids outside and spend our careers working toward a more sustainable future. So, because of this bubble, I think I am able to keep pretty positive about the future. Every once in a while I step outside the bubble and realize the way I think and live is not what everyone is doing. I do get discouraged sometimes. No matter what I am feeling, I still feel motivated and know that what I am doing does make a difference on some scale. For our community, the MK Nature Center is a pretty special place! We teach a lot of people and we provide an opportunity for people to see wildlife in the city. I am happy to be a part of it.
by editor | Jul 29, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
If you’re a teacher, CLEARING would love to hear from you!
We are compiling anecdotal examples of fun, engaging and successful environmental education activities from teachers around the Pacific Northwest.
We are especially interested in teachable moments that sprang from creativity, inspiration, and special circumstances. If you have ever created, implemented, or participated in an especially wonderful or memorable EE learning activity, we hope you will share your experience through CLEARING.
Example:
It was a damp, sunny day, and my grade three class was called to the front lawn of the school for a school-wide portrait. Classes from kindergarten to grade five trooped out and jostled for places on the lawn. My third graders, however, were distracted. They were peering into the long grass at the gigantic earthworms that were wriggling at their feet. Seeing other students shy away and shriek at the worms, my class sprang into action, the bravest of them picking up the worms and moving them to the edge of the grass, away from the stampede of feet. Eventually, we were chastised for holding up the photo, and my worm wranglers were themselves wrangled into place.
With the photo shoot completed, the students looked around frantically for the worms. The questions came fast and furious – why would the worms come out when they’re going to get stepped on? One child suggested that worms come out when they feel the ground shake. We decided to test it and find out. We spread out on the lawn and stomped up and down, and up popped a worm. Jubilant, the students danced more vigorously, laughing. The office staff was laughing pretty hard, too. Every student danced a worm up out of the ground that morning. We observed them, and let them go, and finally headed back inside
—Laurelei Primeau
Coquitlam, BC
Please take a moment and write a couple of paragraphs describing what you did, how it happened or how you did it, and what made it special.
Ultimately we’d like to compile examples from across the K-12 spectrum, in formal classrooms as well as non-formal, of those teaching ideas that really came together and created a special learning moment for everyone involved.
Use the reply box below to add your example, along with your name and school/affiliation. We will compile what we receive into our searchable database of the best resources for environmental education.
by editor | Jul 2, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
1. National Geographic Education: Collections
The National Geographic Education website has a number of collections dedicated to different areas within the natural sciences. Topics include ocean education, ecosystems, natural disasters, endangered species, and much more. Resources can be selected by grade, subject, type, and more.
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/collections-topics/?ar_a=1
2. Melinda Gray Ardia Environmental Foundation Grants
K-12 teachers are invited to apply for grants to develop or implement environmental curricula that integrate hands-on ecology exercises into the classroom. To facilitate learning and student empowerment, environmental curricula should be holistic and strive to synthesize multiple levels of learning (facts, concepts, and principles), often including experiential integrated learning and problem solving. The deadline for pre-proposals is September 13, 2013.
http://www.mgaef.org/application.htm
3. Aquatic Food Webs
This NOAA Education Resources website offers an exploration of aquatic food webs. The website offers videos, lesson plans, and data sets. Check out the Real World Data investigations, Who’s Eating Whom, and more.
http://www.education.noaa.gov/Marine_Life/Aquatic_Food_Webs.html
4. Spark 101
Spark 101 features free interactive videos made by industry professionals on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) topics. Teachers can use these brief videos to engage students in solving real-world problems. The content is directly connected to national curriculum from the College Board’s Advanced Placement, the National Academy Foundation, and Project Lead the Way. The videos have a three-segment format, with pauses for student dialogue.
http://www.spark101.org/
5. DeepSea America
The Deepsea Challenger is James Cameron’s single-pilot submersible that he took to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Follow the archives through daily logs, photos, and more as the sub and expedition team traveled on a nation-wide educational tour to highlight the importance of ocean research and green STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) education from California to Massachusetts, where the sub has been donated to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
http://www.deepseaamerica.com/
6. Nature Bridge
NatureBridge provides hands-on environmental field science education for children and teens through National Park-based overnight field science programs. Parks include Channel Islands, Olympic, and others. NatureBridge provide scholarships to more than 35% of their participating schools in order to reach more students from underserved communities. Sign up for email updates, download lesson plans, and more.
http://www.naturebridge.org/
7. Citizen Science – Precipitation Measurements
The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network is a non-profit, community-based network of volunteers measuring and mapping precipitation (rain, hail and snow). By using low-cost measurement tools, stressing training and education, and utilizing an interactive website, the aim is to provide high-quality data for natural resource, education, and research applications.
http://www.cocorahs.org/
8. Outdoor Nation
Outdoor Nation is dedicated to reconnecting youth with the outdoors. They host summits around the country, offer grants, lead outdoor outings, and more in an effort to mobilize a movement to get people back outside. Summits in Chicago, Illinois and Seattle, Washington will be held July 2013.
http://outdoornation.org/
by editor | Jun 6, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
On the Day You Were Born
Author: Debra Frasier
ISBN-13: 9780152579951
Reviewed by Seth Webb
any of the stories that we tell our students and the cultural lessons that we share are our part of our collective oral tradition – they belong to all of us. They are of the Earth and we are of the Earth. These stories resonate with us because we have lived them, experienced them first-hand as fellow passengers on this planet.
Like stories once passed down for generations and now seldom retold, the sense of intimacy present in these tales can be lost when not repeatedly shared with children. It is essential that we regularly return to this connection, to remind and refresh us all of where we came from and how we are all related – to each other, to the Earth, and the universe.
The atoms that fuel the energy of the Sun, that form the water in our seas, that build the cells that scaffold the tallest trees, and allow for our brains to make sense of what we perceive all can be traced back to stardust. They and we are one.
In On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier, one’s scientific way of knowing merges with the spiritual. Through gorgeously rendered paper collages and poetic text, the story tells the tale of each human’s journey from within the womb to the world outside – all the while speaking of the patterns and rhythms of nature that have always been. It is an intimate story that connects us again and again to the greater cosmos.
On each page there are volumes being said – the words speak like pictures and the illustrations root you to the world. Each conveys just enough to allow for the mind to wonder and make connections.
Following the story, there are additional pages that explore and illuminate the science behind each illustration. Each description dovetails nicely with the lessons we share in a Montessori environment: the Universe Story, the Work of Water, the Work of Air, Botany, Zoology, The Coming of People, etc. Children delight and find great comfort in the discovery that the stories we tell and the impressionistic lessons we share are part of the wider collection of knowledge held by others – outside the classroom.
On the Day You Were Born balances our inherent desire to highlight the gifts of each individual child, with the strength found in community. Despite the fabulous uniqueness of each one of us, we need to be sure to celebrate each child’s individuality while underscoring the connections that tie us all together. To only do the former, leaving the latter as an afterthought, teaches children just that: that our connections to others and the universe are to be secondary to the “mighty me”.
Developmentally this can be a challenge. Children can, at times, struggle with balancing their growing sense of self and independence with meaningful relationships with others. This makes sense for young children, as they are hard at work understanding how to get their needs met first and foremost. Those around them can be seen as either helping that process or hindering it.
No matter one’s age, however, in sharing stories like Frasier’s we subtly remind us all that there is more to our lives than meeting our own personal needs and desires. We have a collective history that has relied upon, and a future that now yearns for, our collaboration.
— Seth D. Webb is the Instructional Leader for the Upper Elementary Department at Free Horizon Montessori, a charter public school in Golden, Colorado. Prior to working in the classroom, Seth taught outdoor experiential education in Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Wyoming with many institutions, including: Earlham College’s Wilderness Program, Grand Canyon Field Institute, and the National Outdoor Leadership School. Read more at his blog, Finding Our Center – Reaching Out.
by editor | Jun 6, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book:
448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up
by Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer (Guilford, CT: Falcon Guides, 2013), 224 pp.
Reviewed by Michael D. Barton
n an ideal world, kids would spend more time playing outside, in their neighborhoods, at local parks, and exploring natural areas near where they live. Parents would un-hesitantly encourage this. Unfortunately, we live in a world flooded with technological devices vying for our kids’ attention and after school hours scheduled all the way up to dinner and beyond. Fortunately, scores of national, regional, and local organizations are making headway in making playing outdoors nature connection an integral component of our everyday lives. As much good as these organizations are doing, the need to get kids outside is first and foremost the role of the parent.
Surely, not all parents over-schedule their kids or put technology in their faces at the first sign of boredom. But, there are many who need advice and encouragement for making that step to raising an outdoor child. And ideas! This is where books like The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up by Stacy Tornio and Ken Keffer come in:
Tornio and Keffer run the website Destination Nature, and after some time sharing their passion for getting kids into nature in the online world, thought it would be great to make a book out of it. And what a book it is! With vibrant illustrations from Rachel Riordan, Tornio and Keffer share a wealth of ideas for playing outside, exploring in nature, eating healthy, being artsy, and the types of places to visit. Combine The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up with Suz Lipman’s Fed Up with Frenzy: Slow Parenting in a Fast-Moving World and Jennifer Ward’s trio – Let’s Go Outside!: Outdoor Activities and Projects to Get You and Your Kids Closer to Nature, I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature, and It’s a Jungle Out There!: 52 Nature Adventures for City Kids – and you’ve got a recipe for an outdoor kid. David Mizejewski writes in a Foreward for the book: “The thought of the next generation – our kids – growing up into adults who don’t care about protecting wilderness areas, about keeping our air and water clean, or about saving wildlife because they had no opportunity as a child to experience the natural world around them is a scary prospect.”
Thank you to folks like Tornio and Keffer for helping to turn the tide and reconnect kids to nature. More important, thank you to the parents who will pick up a book like The Kids’ Outdoor Adventure Book: 448 Great Things to Do in Nature Before You Grow Up. You are where the change begins in getting kids to have outdoor adventures!
Michael D. Barton is a father of two children who has a passion for exploring natural areas with them. He blogs at Exploring Portland’s Natural Areas http://exploreportlandnature.wordpress.com/
by editor | May 13, 2013 | K-12 Classroom Resources
by Matt Love
n a Thursday in late November 2010, a month that eventually produced the second wettest November since instruments have measured depressing records of this kind, I sat at my desk in my classroom and heard rain falling for the 31st day in a row. I immediately thought of one of Ken Kesey’s enduring riffs about rain from Sometimes a Great Notion: “…there is solace and certain stoical peace in blaming everything on the rain, and then blaming something as uncontrollable as the rain on something as indifferent as the Arm of the Lord.”
True enough. But not true enough for us to survive. Blaming gets you nowhere with rain.
That morning, my patience with rain hung by the thinnest of beaded cobwebs as I schemed how to motivate my listless and intellectually waterlogged students. Soon, they would start streaming in with pale, vacant faces resembling prisoners of war, moisture steaming from their clothing. I suspected many of them had gone insane.
We’ve got to move into the deluge, I thought. It’s the only way to shatter the stasis. Last year, I had employed a similar strategy with the photography class and the resulting black and white photographs of rain they took around campus in 30 minutes revolutionized our thinking about the beauty of rain. I had made up the lesson on the spot and forced them (and myself) to examine rain with a camera on a tight deadline. By the end of the slide show that culminated the assignment, all students were converted into a love cult of rain that I also made up on the spot.
In trudged the creative writing students with their soggy frowns. In recent weeks their angst had secreted like pus from a lanced boil. On the whiteboard in huge black words I wrote the fatal statistics: 19 inches of rain had fallen during the last 30 days, seven the last 72 hours, four since midnight, even heavier rain was forecast for the next couple of days, records were going to be shattered, the county was already underwater, rivers were running well above flood stage but had yet to crest, school might be cancelled for a week, and there was only one thing we could possibly do: go into it, right now.
The students gave me a big whatever. They were in worse condition than I imagined. I climbed on a desk and yelled, “We’re going to confront rain and poetry is our method! Are you with me?”
Whatever began to dissipate, slightly, visibly, sort of like condensation.
I jumped off the desk and told the class to get paper, pen and drain the pus. We were traveling to a new country called the Rainlands and abandoning clichés and complainers. I wrote a prompt on the board and everyone quickly responded with one word or phrase. Then I threw out another one. I asked the students to assist me and several volunteered prompts. Some 15 minutes later we had written on the following:
1. What magic can you perform with rain?
2. Describe your favorite kind of rain.
3. Make a case for or against using an umbrella.
4. Concoct a love potion that has rain as an ingredient.
5. Blame something on rain.
6. Complete this simile: Oregon rain is like_______.
7. What do politicians do with rain?
8. Devise a slogan and sketch a logo for Oregon rain.
9. Pluvial or petrichor?
10. You overhear a tourist say how much she hates rain. How do you respond?
11. Make a case for the greatest song about rain.
12. Defend your preference: running naked in Oregon rain or tanning on a tropical beach.
13. What can you hear if you listen to rain?
14. Rain = _____.
15. Rain helps me understand…
16. What type of rain are you? Construct a rain metaphor for yourself.
It was time for confrontation, to blast a bazooka round into the congealed void of whatever.
“We’re now going outside in rain. Leave your stuff here. Spread out across the football field so you’re at least 50 feet away from another student. Tilt your face toward the sky, close your eyes, open your mouth, taste rain for 30 seconds, and then get back to class.”
I led the charge out the door and 41 students followed me into one of the heaviest rains I have ever witnessed in my life. One boy took off his shirt. One girl started to, but I stopped her just in time. We aren’t quite there as a culture—yet.
Back in class five minutes later, I had the students delete, add, edit and rearrange their responses to construct a poem. Ten minutes later, I asked for readers. I’ll never forget Logan’s poem:
Every November, the Oregon cult
goes to work.
We quarry up each raindrop
to use as our limestones
to construct a great church
to the giver of Oregon’s purpose.
Matt Love lives near Newport and teaches English and journalism at Newport High School. His latest book is Of Walking in Rain and is available through his web site at nestuccaspitpress.com. He can be reached at lovematt100@yahoo.com. This essay was originally published in HIPFISHmonthly – Volume 14, Issue 172, May 2013. hipfishmonthly.com
