“This was a wonderful week—fun balanced with lots of things to take away and try with my kids … a much deeper appreciation of environmental literacy.” The first of three planned Elementary Environmental Literacy Summer Institutes was presented to K–5 teachers by the Alameda Unified School District (USD) in summer 2017. The Bay Area Science […]
As a child growing up on a small lake in the Midwest, I spent my summer days in a little wooden dinghy exploring and learning about my wild neighbors: the muskrats, sunfish, bass, snakes, minnows, turtles, waterfowl, snails, and more. Those years of feeling connected to, and part of, the natural world influenced so much […]
“No one will protect what they don’t care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced” ― David Attenborough “Can you see the small gray bird on the third post in the field?” asks Audubon volunteer Paul Fenwick, as students fumble with their binoculars to spot the little gray bird. As […]
The first weekend of December marked a high-point in my work as a California Regional Environmental Education Community (CREEC) coordinator. Thanks to the support of Ten Strands and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, I attended my first CREEC Professional Learning Conference at San Luis Obispo’s Rancho El Chorro Conference & Retreat Center. During the time we […]
On November 8, 2017 California’s State Board of Education (SBE) approved a new California Science Test Blueprint—the next step in the process of fully implementing the state’s new science standards, the Next Generation Science Standards. This phase is a normal part of the implementation process that involves: adoption of new standards; development of new curriculum […]
The following are excerpts from the keynote address Terry Tamminen, CEO of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, gave at the California Science Teachers Association 2017 Conference in Sacramento on Friday, October 13, 2017. The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation (LDF) is working around the globe on species protection and conservation issues, climate change, and empowering indigenous and local […]
How can educators better understand and teach environmental literacy in our schools? With support from California’s Environmental Literacy Steering Committee and the California Subject Matter Projects, the California International Studies Project (CISP) created a new professional learning program to address this challenge. Working with teachers in Sonoma and Long Beach this summer, CISP launched a […]
We couldn’t have asked for a better setting for our environmental literacy retreat. Thanks to Ten Strands and the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, regional site directors from the California History–Social Science Project had the opportunity to gather in mid August in Pacifica to think over how best to integrate environmental literacy into K–12 history–social science (HSS) […]
UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science recently released “A Field at Risk: The Impact of COVID-19 on Environmental and Outdoor Science Education.”