I am a science teacher first and foremost, and I view my world through this lens though usually I don’t even recognize it is there. It also means that I ask a lot of questions, but my questions have served me well and invited conversations that have led to places that I never thought I […]
As a kindergarten teacher, one of my goals at the beginning of each school year is to have my students reading and (hopefully!) writing by June. At the beginning of every year I realize what a monumental task it is as I gaze at my classroom on that first day of school. If you’ve ever […]
It’s a sunny May morning in the Imperial Valley; by 8:00am it’s already 90° and climbing. I arrived the afternoon before and decided to avoid the interstate by taking the 78, a winding two-lane road that at times looks like what I imagine the surface of the moon would. Extending south from the Salton Sea […]
“The students cleared a local pond that frequently gets clogged with natural or human-made pollution. On their return visit, they saw that a huge log had been thrown into the pond–but when they went to remove it, they found a thriving ecosystem of snails reclaiming the wood. So the students made the independent decision to […]
It has been almost a year since I first attended the San Mateo Environmental Learning Collaborative (SM ELC). Focused on the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), SM ELC is a unique opportunity hosted by Ten Strands, SEER, and the San Mateo County Office of Education—STEM Center offered to K–8 teachers. As part of SM ELC, […]
At the beginning of the San Mateo Environmental Education Learning Collaborative (SM ELC) workshop, Dr. Gerald Lieberman asked us who didn’t feel comfortable or knowledgeable applying the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The majority of teachers in the room raised their hands. Before we joined the SM ELC, I would have raised my hand as […]
Last week Ten Strands and the San Mateo County Office of Education—STEM Center hosted the second iteration of the San Mateo Environmental Learning Collaborative (SM ELC), a professional learning workshop for San Mateo county teachers. The SM ELC brought together area nonformal environmental education partners, curriculum experts from the State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER), teacher trainers from CalRecycle’s Office of Education […]
(This is part two of teacher Julie DiMaio’s blog. In part one Julie describes her participation in the San Mateo Environmental Learning Collaborative summer 2015 teacher institute. In part two she shares the outcome of her work and the impact the unit she developed had on her students.) Once Jerry told us that the Environmental […]
UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science recently released “A Field at Risk: The Impact of COVID-19 on Environmental and Outdoor Science Education.”