Making connections for environmental education

How can you get students fired up about environmental education? Get them outside and get them involved in local issues through activism, service learning, and teaching others.

By Carolyn Moser

Learn more

• Project Learning Tree "An award-winning environmental education program designed for teachers and other educators, parents, and community leaders working with youth from preschool through grade 12." Curriculum materials are available by mail.
• Project Wet: Water Education for Teachers Programs, events, and publications for educators.
• Learn and Serve North Carolina NCDPI's service learning page, with an explanation of service learning, tips on designing a service learning program, and an explanation of how service learning fits both the state curriculum and current education research.
• North Carolina Big Sweep A nonprofit organization that conducts year-round education for litter-free waters and coordinates an annual coastal cleanup effort.
• North Carolina Office of Environmental Education Educator resources, Environmental Education Certification, professional development, an environmental education library, and more.
• Field Guides from eNature.com Field guides on amphibians, birds, butterflies, fishes, insects, mammales, reptiles, seashells, seashore creatures, spiders, trees, wildflowers, and native plants. For each species, the site provides photographs, a description, and information about breeding, habitat, range, and endangered status.
• The Yuckiest Site on the Internet This site from Discovery.com offers vital information on worms, roaches, and "gross and cool" bodily functions such as "barfing, belching, and blackheads." When you're having trouble getting kids' attention, this site may just do the trick. Flash and non-Flash versions are available.

Related pages

• Science students get their hands dirty: Enter Carol Swink's classroom where students become scientists by conducting hands-on, inquiry-based investigations. By saving the textbook reading and lectures for last and doing experiments first, students master not only science content but math content too.
• Letting students ask the questions -- and answering them: For this high school science teacher, learning science means doing science. A look at an inquiry-based earth and environmental science classroom.
• Science as a verb: Inquiry science requires active relationships between students, teachers, and science. Building these relationships is a three-step process that involves thinking about inquiry as a process of science, as a pedagogical strategy, and as a set of skills and behaviors to encourage in students.

Related topics

• Learn more about environmental science, experiential learning, inquiry, science, scientific inquiry, service learning, and teaching methods.

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Recently, while doing an activity outside on the school campus, one of my students found a strange looking gray insect that blended in with the tree bark so well that we had to look carefully to see it move. We carefully collected the little creature and used a field guide to find out what we had discovered. Watching my students gather around the table and search through various field guides was one of those special moments that motivates me to facilitate more great learning occasions.

As a seventh grade science teacher for more than 20 years, I know that I must find creative and innovative methods for engaging my students in science. Environmental science does that and much more. Seventh graders are not too old to find fascination in the great outdoors! Taking science out of the classroom helps me to involve children in science and build connections between their lives and what they read about in books, newspapers, and on the Internet. Over the years I have collected a variety of activities that work exceptionally well with children on the school grounds or in a city or state park that we visit on a fieldtrip. My students have come to look forward to the days when the weather is nice and we have planned an outside activity. From past experience they know that it will be an exciting class period filled with lots of discovery and fun.

Taking the curriculum outdoors

I imagine the first question in the minds of most North Carolina teachers is: “If you spend so much time outside of the classroom, how do you manage to cover the science curriculum?” For years, this was a problem for me, until I figured out how to take each topic in the curriculum outside.

One of the first things I did to facilitate this different approach to teaching was to apply for several grants that allowed me to create an outdoor classroom. My students put picnic tables together and painted them so that we could hold our class outside whenever possible.

I also realized that just being outside was not enough. I had to figure out how to make connections between the curriculum and what the students saw around them. This took many years of planning and searching various sources for ideas that worked for my situation. One resource available to all teachers in North Carolina is the Environmental Education Certification program. This endeavor took me to many areas of the state to attend workshops at state parks and universities. During these workshops, I found an abundance of ideas that helped me connect everything I taught to the environment. It makes perfect sense when you think about it. All things covered in science are part of our overall environment. Making these links clear for children helps to make their learning experiences enduring and meaningful.

I use three techniques to help accomplish my goal of “Making Connections for Environmental Education”: using local environmental issues as a starting point; allowing students to become teachers; and implementing service learning. I will briefly summarize each strategy and give some examples of things my students have done that connect the curriculum to their lives.

Teaching with local environmental issues

First of all, my students keep up with local environmental issues. Often this requires that I scan the papers and newscasts for items of importance to citizens in our community. One of the most relevant issues for the past several years has been land development. During the year, we study the issue from all perspectives and engage in discussions, debates, and interviews with key people.

Recently, a large wooded area close to the school was clear-cut for a new housing development. I did not want my students to simply watch this happen without asking, “Why?” I wanted them to see that being environmentally conscious citizens makes it our obligation to investigate things that impact our environment. I guided them to identify the key people in this project and contact them personally. They made phone calls, wrote letters, and invited various people into the classroom to share their points of view. We found that land development is a political, social, and economic issue that has many consequences for many groups of people in our community. This awareness helped my students take a more active role as citizens by keeping informed of new projects that might destroy large areas of forest in our community. Even though we could not change what was happening, we could become better informed about the issue, and have a voice.

Becoming informed about environmental controversies is a slow and on-going process. It took an entire school year to get an understanding of all of the interests involved in land development. As we watched the landscape being changed we looked for environmental effects. Water quality was one of our major concerns. We tested the stream on our school campus four different times during the year to see if the runoff was impacting the water quality. I plan to continue this with the class next year and compare the data from this year to the new data that is collected. This will create an archive of data that can be compared by students for years to come.

Students as teachers

A second method I have used with middle school students is to allow them to become the teachers. Many of the activities in Project Learning Tree, Project Wet, and Project Wild are suitable for children in primary and elementary grades. These teaching manuals are given to participants in workshops conducted by the North Carolina Office of Environmental Education. They are full of wonderful and effective teaching ideas. (To find out about taking one of these workshops check the web site of the Office of Environmental Education.)

After trying out the activities with my seventh-grade students, the students are ready to become the leaders, go to elementary classrooms and conduct the activities with groups of younger children. I have found this to be a most effective method for empowering middle school children and have them fully understand environmental concepts. As the poet Maya Angelou once said, “To teach is to learn. To give is to get.” This becomes very evident when my students become the teachers and work to teach younger children environmental concepts. They become motivated, animated, and enthusiastic about what they are doing. Suddenly, environmental information becomes much more important and deserves to be shared.

I called the project “The Traveling Ecologists.” To help supply the materials and equipment for the activities, I again wrote a grant. We visited five different elementary schools and delivered more than forty different environmental lessons to children who might never have had this opportunity.

When my students were surveyed at the end of the school year, they told me that teaching elementary students was the most memorable event of the school year. I am confident that this made a lasting impression on the middle and elementary students.

Service learning

A third strategy that has worked very well for me is service learning. I have used this effectively with the after-school group at our school. They meet weekly in a group called “Community Action.” The after school group does many different service learning projects, but the primary focus is environmental issues. This group has successfully maintained the school recycling program, planted a school garden, built bird feeders, collected litter on the school grounds, planted bulbs, and used GIS (Geographical Informational Systems) to collect data from the school campus.

While I realize that all of these activities require a huge amount of time out of the regular school day, I know that organizing a science service club is a wonderful method for getting children connected to environmental science. They not only learn about environmental issues, but present their findings to school and community groups. This helps children develop confidence and also informs others about how important the natural environment is to our future. If you are interested in implementing service learning projects with your students on any level, you can learn all about it on the websites at the end of this article.

Conclusion

Our natural resources are precious. Without stewardship and education we cannot hope to protect our environment for the next generation and beyond. By using these three teaching techniques, I am helping my students become more aware and informed about the environmental problems and solutions that could impact their future lives. Activities like these also encourage inquiry-based thinking and learning.

No two schools or classes are the same, so every teacher must customize the activities to meet the needs of students. I will gladly offer my assistance. My website is currently under development with many lesson plans and suggestions. It can be accessed from North Carolina State University’s Kenan Fellows web site.