San Mateo Environmental Solutionary Teacher Fellowship

We’ve partnered with the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) for more than eight years to bring together teachers, professional learning and academic standards experts, and community-based partners to integrate environmental and climate justice and knowledge-to-action solutionary teaching and learning into their curriculum.

The Environmental Solutionary Teacher Fellowship (ESTF)—formerly known as the San Mateo Environmental Collaborative (SMELC)—is built around four key elements of professional learning: knowledge, action, accountability and reflection, and connection to partners. It builds teacher capacity for designing and delivering learning experiences that are student-centered, problem/project-based, solutions-oriented, and integrate California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs). Each unit is field tested, and the journey for teachers and students is captured in a final reflective case study and presentation.

To be successful, students need to learn key skills—such as critical thinking, problem solving, and communication—and meet academic goals. Teachers need access to high-quality professional learning experiences that help them keep students engaged while they impart key skills and teach state standards to mastery. Our partnership with SMCOE provides area TK–12 teachers with a unique opportunity to participate in professional learning focused on teaching the Next Generation Science Standards using project-based learning and the local environment.

Check out the following stories by participants of ESTF:

Learn more about the fellowship here.

To learn more about the approaches taken by SMCOE on whole systems integration of environmental and climate literacy and sustainable and climate-ready schools, click here.

Partners

San Mateo County Office of Education

The San Mateo County Office of Education is dedicated to serving San Mateo county's 23 school districts in a shared mission to deliver a top-rate educational experience for nearly 94,000 students. The San Mateo County…