2007 Outstanding Educators

Jim Chandler, Maine

Jim Chandler has been involved in environmental education for 30 years and a PLT facilitator since 1988. He is an innovator of a wide range of ongoing formal and non-formal education programs that use PLT materials to increase students’ understanding of the forest environment and resource conservation.

In his current job with the Auburn School Department, he administers the K-8 science curriculum and arranges professional development for 11 schools. PLT is incorporated throughout the curriculum and most of the teachers have been trained in PLT. He is also Director of the Auburn Land Lab, an environmental center serving schools in central Maine that uses the environment as a context for learning for more than 3,500 visiting K-12 students each year and for coaching Canon Envirothon teams.

Jim brought the Envirothon program (North America’s largest high school environmental education competition) into Maine in 1989. Today 80 teams, representing one third of the state’s high schools, participate each year. Jim served as Secretary of Canon Envirothon from 1996 to 2002, helping to expand the program to international prominence, as well as developing educational standards and judging rubrics.

For ten years beginning in 1987, Jim started a variety of educational and conservation programs for the Oxford County Soil and Water Conservation District that are ongoing to this day—for example, Kids for Trees (a Christmas tree growing project), a Forestry Demonstration Trail based on the PLT model at the Maine Conservation School, and an annual Agriculture Education Day at the Oxford County Fair. In the late 1990s, Jim taught 7th grade science at Oxford Hills Middle School.

Jim is an active board member and two-term past president of the Maine Environmental Education Association. In this role, he has helped develop statewide workshops showing how environmental education can be used to achieve Maine Learning Results, the state’s education standards. Now he is coordinating an effort to involve the environmental education community in the mandated Maine Learning Results Review.

Melanie Cornelius, Texas

Melanie Cornelius oversees her Texas school district’s elementary science curriculum, teaching resources, and professional development. Two days a week, she teaches bilingual science at one of Frisco’s elementary schools.

Melanie joined Frisco Independent School District (ISD) in 2001. She helps elementary teachers in 22 schools deliver science education to approximately 8,000 elementary-aged students speaking 35 different languages in this booming suburb north of Dallas. When her school district’s science curriculum was rewritten in 2003, Melanie was instrumental in making PLT activities a requirement for specific units in grades two, four, and five.

Melanie holds PLT professional development workshops several times a year for those grade level teachers with science responsibilities. For the past three years, Melanie has acquired U.S. Department of Education grants to implement these trainings. Last year, she expanded the experience to a weekend on Lake Texoma where teachers not only received training in the PLT activities required by the curriculum but also advanced training in differentiated instruction for English Language Learners (ELLs).

Melanie has found PLT to be very effective with students from all backgrounds. She believes her school district’s ELLs have improved performance on benchmarks for state-mandated science tests due in large part to PLT activities that are conducted in English and Spanish.

Melanie’s career in education began in Oklahoma in 1989 as a 5th grade classroom teacher. Then Melanie taught 3rd and 4th grade in an international school in Saudi Arabia for seven years before moving to Texas in 1998 where she taught for one year in a private school.

Most recently in her present position with Frisco ISD, Melanie has created a Science Resource Center for teachers in her district to purchase supplies and requisition equipment that helps them conduct hands-on science lessons and experiments.

Michelle Hunter, Florida

Michelle Hunter teaches all subjects to 4th graders at Shadeville Elementary School in Crawfordville, Florida. The school has been certified as a Florida PLT School since 2000 and Michelle has been the school’s PLT Coordinator for the past three years.

For the school to maintain its designation as a PLT School at least 80% of the faculty is required to attend a PLT workshop and of this 80%, at least 50% are required to participate in an annual PLT week. Michelle organizes this school-wide, week-long environmental education unit that incorporates multiple, grade-level appropriate PLT activities for each student, a science and literary fair, and community guest speaker presentations around a particular theme. Over 650 youth, 50 faculty members, and hundreds of parent volunteers participate. This year, the week-long event “Wakulla Water Wonders” held in April combined PLT activities and guest speakers from St. Marks Wildlife Refuge and Wakulla Springs State Park.

A trained PLT facilitator, Michelle leads inservice PLT professional development workshops to help her fellow colleagues incorporate the PLT curriculum methods and techniques into their own classrooms throughout the year. To further help teachers provide experiential experiences that enhance student learning, Michelle works with a local nursery to maintain the school’s butterfly garden and outdoor classroom. Here, students learn about native plants, bird identification, and animal habitats through hands-on, outdoor investigations.
 
Michelle also organizes school environmental field trips for several classes and encourages other teachers to take part. This year classes of students will have visited Marianna Caverns, Gulf World, Bear Creek, and Gulf Specimen Marine Lab. Michelle’s own class trip to St. Marks Wildlife Refuge gives students the opportunity not only to experience Florida’s wiregrass ecosystem, but also have a hand helping to restore it by planting wiregrass plugs.

Gail Lutowski, Georgia

Gail Lutowski uses PLT activities and learning methods as a foundation for the many outdoor education programs she develops for the University of Georgia’s Mary Kahrs Warnell Forest Education Center. Gail’s programs have reached over 20,000 students and teachers since the Center opened in 2001.

Gail leads K-12 field trips for local area schools and youth groups around the Center’s 3,300-acre working forest. She also coordinates the Savannah Society of American Foresters (SAF) chapter Walk in the Warnell Forest educational program for 4th grade students, teachers, and parents that is used as a model for other SAF chapters.

Gail was trained in PLT in 1997 and became a PLT facilitator in 2001. She conducts PLT training workshops for local school teachers, preservice teachers, area foresters, and other natural resource professionals to teach others how to use PLT with their students. As a Regional Coordinator for the Georgia PLT program, she serves as a team leader for all PLT facilitators in her 15-county district, sets workshop goals, and serves as a mentor for facilitators.

Gail researches school systems, PTO groups, Scouts, day care centers, after-school programs, and other groups that would benefit from PLT training and directs education leaders and curriculum coordinators to workshop opportunities. For example, she initiated a partnership with Georgia Southern State University College of Education in Statesboro to make PLT educator workshops a part of the required curriculum for all senior level preservice teachers, and she works with Regional Educational Service Agencies to establish PLT in school systems.

Gail devotes much personal time to community groups, schools, and professional associations. She began a Georgia Adopt-A-Wetland program for Effingham County 7th grade students, and formed an after-school program for 5th-9th grade girls to encourage them to pursue careers in science. She works with her local FFA chapter, Boy Scout, Girl Scout, and Venture Crew troops, and coaches several Science Olympiad events at the middle and high school level.

Hazel Scharosch

Hazel Scharosch is a classroom teacher in a one-room school house!

Located in a ranching community, Red Creek Elementary School has one multi-age classroom for all students. Hazel teaches all subject areas to the school’s kindergarten through 6th grade students, and has on average 9-12 students in any given year. She has been teaching in this small rural school for 17 years.

Hazel was introduced to PLT 15 years ago at a four-day environmental education workshop hosted in part by two of the original developers of the PLT curriculum. The workshop forever changed her methods of teaching and served to deepen her commitment to expanding environmental literacy for all.
 
Since then, Hazel has conducted numerous PLT workshops for both classroom teachers and non-formal educators, including Girl Scout leaders, child care providers, and 4-H club members. She has taught a 3-day joint PLT, Project WET and Project Wild workshop at least twice a year every year. She has correlated PLT activities to the Girl Scout Manuals and shown camp counselors how to integrate PLT with Girl Scout activities to enrich learning.

Hazel has played a critical role in delivering the PLT program to a wide range of educators across Wyoming for many years. She has recruited new facilitators, helping to almost double the number of trained PLT facilitators in Wyoming and expand PLT into other areas of the state.

Through the use of PLT, Hazel’s own students are taught to explore different sides of each issue. She uses several outdoor study areas close to her school for hands-on studies and, every year, she organizes a major environmental field trip for her whole class, including her students’ parents and siblings.

Hazel is currently serving on Natrona County School District’s Science Adoption Committee with a goal of incorporating environmental education into a new science curriculum.