March is only here for a couple more days, but its not too late to celebrate Women’s History Month.
The 2009 theme is Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet. Even though women’s history month is almost over, environmental educators can take advantage of this great theme and use it throughout the year.
From www.womenshistorymonth.gov: ”In 1987, the National Women’s History Project petitioned Congress to expand the celebration [from a week] to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women’s History Month Resolution has been approved every year with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate.”
Springtime always peaks my interest in phenology. Recently, I went to a local book seller and inquired if they sold phenology journals, the women at the book store asked if I had looked in the New Age section. Right away I knew her mistake, “Not Phrenology,” I said, “Phenology.”
Here is a list of phenology resources from people and organizations who definitely wouldn’t make the same mistake.
Project BudBurst is “is a national field campaign for citizen scientists designed to engage the public in the collection of important climate change data based on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers. ”
5/09 UPDATE: I finally got the chance to test out this game last week and it works beautifully! Of note, the sediment and sedimentary lines get long (all dice, except magma, lead to sediment – and sediment only leads to sedimentary) so leave some extra space by those two dice. Some great follow-up questions include: Are all the dice the same? Why is there an animal station in a rock cycle game? Does anyone have many of the same color beads in a row – do rocks change fast or slow?
After going through the ProjectWet training a couple weeks ago I was inspired to make a rock cycle version of the popular Incredible Journey activity.
The rock cycle version has six dice: Igneous, Metamorphic, Sedimentary, Sediment, Magma, and Animal. Igneous, Metamorphic, and Sedimentary are, of course, the the three types of rocks. Sediment and Magma are transition types – sediment leads to sedimentary and magma leads to igneous. The animal die was included to demonstrate that life interacts with rocks, a snail was chosen because snail-like shells can frequently be seen fossilized in local sedimentary rocks.
One thing that was identified at both symposia is a need for translators to communicate between scientists and community.The values and methods of communicating with these two groups are very different, making direct communication nearly impossible.
The role of translator between scientist and community member is a role Environmental Educators have been playing for decades: making it real to the community how environmental science effects their everyday lives.
Perhaps Environmental Educators could translate their skills to other types of science – health, psychology, etc. Additionally, they may be able to help the communication flow from the community to scientists; pass on information about the community’s needs and therefore obtain their buy-in.
This strong connection to local communities with help scientists fulfill national grant standards and foster more relevant and valuable research.
I didn’t realize that MaryBeth developed the National Eagle Center with sheer hard work and determination. Like many of us working in environmental science, she followed her passion.
The National Eagle Center is an inspirational place on its own – but learning the story of its development makes it even more amazing.
If you haven’t recently (or ever) gone through the Project Wet, Wild, and Learning Tree training I highly recommend taking them again!
I had the opportunity to go through the training, for the third time, last week at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve (which is such a cool place it deserves a post of its own) and I was happily surprised at the upgrades and additions to the programs.
New (since about three years ago went I last attended a training) is a Early Childhood supplement for Project Wild, an awesome Project Wild Aquatic book, a phenomenal time-saving book with Minnesota versions of Project Wild activities, and a newly revised Project Learning Tree guide. They have also recently added a plethora of online components.
Also, as always, the opportunity to meet new people is priceless.
If you want to attend, check out the calendar and sign up! If you have a big group you can contact the Project coordinators and see if you can arrange a private training.
The International Children’s Digital Library is wonderful website full of great resources for educators, parents, and anyone who loves children’s literature and illustration.
There are many science and nature themed books with high-res scanned images of all of the pages, including the illustrations. And many of the book’s copyrights have expired so you can used the illustrations for programs. The organization has even developed a Teacher Training Manual.
“the mission of the International Children’s Digital Library Foundation is to prepare children for life in an ethnically and culturally diverse world by building the world’s largest online multicultural repository of children’s literature.”
Image form the International Children's Digital Library
I had a great opportunity to discuss playing outdoors with 6th graders this week.
Through the Resource Teacher program I worked with a phenomenal language teacher at a middle school in Circle Pines, MN. The program gave students some historical knowledge of what it was like being a kid 50 – 150 years ago through short readings (linked below), gave them an opportunity to play outside – completely unstructured, and then gave them time to reflect, journal, and discuss their thoughts and experiences.
Most of the students said they spend a lot of time outdoors playing outside. However, they expressed a desire for more freedom with their playtime. About half the students said that they thought their parents had more fun as children because they needed to be more creative in their play; they didn’t have organized team sports and technology to create rules and entertain them.
They also cited too much homework as a time barrier to outdoor playtime. I thought this might be a clever ploy, but the teacher confirmed that the students do bear a large homework burden.
Founder of the 
