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Five Project Learning Tree National Outstanding Educators Show Environmental Education Benefits Student Learning
By Vanessa Bullwinkle
Five educators who use environmental education to spur students’ enthusiasm to learn were named the 2010 National Project Learning Tree Outstanding Educators.
The five, selected from a record number of nominations from around the country, are:
• Joy Cowart, a teacher at Lowndes County middle and high schools in Valdosta, Georgia
• Susan Cox, Conservation Education Coordinator with the US Forest Service, based in Durham, New Hampshire
• Reeda Hart, science outreach specialist for the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, Kentucky
• Kurtis Koll, professor of physical science at Cameron University in Lawton, Oklahoma
• Debra Wagner, fourth-grade teacher at St. Paul Lutheran School in Lakeland, Florida
Joy Cowart uses PLT to teach language arts lessons, English as a second language classes, literature, and other courses at Lowndes High and Hahira Middle Schools in Georgia, while at the same time increasing student awareness and knowledge of environmental issues. She also uses PLT activities as a Sunday school teacher, at summer camps, and in a Migrant Summer School curriculum. Now a PLT facilitator, Joy has conducted more than 25 workshops for pre-service teachers at Valdosta State University. Through a GreenWorks! service-learning grant, she involved Hahira students in a landscaping project at a public library. An experienced teacher, Joy became a National Board Certified teacher in 2008.
Susan Cox, Conservation Education Coordinator with the US Forest Service, promotes learning about forests and the environment by forging partnerships between natural resource professionals and educators within her northeastern 20-state region. She incorporates PLT’s hands-on curriculum to provide them with teaching strategies and science content so they, in turn, can train teachers, youth program leaders, and students. She has a leading role in helping the US Forest Service carry out its education and outreach mission. In several states, she has helped design and deliver programs for teachers and other educators, including teacher forestry tours in Maine and watershed institutes in New York. She is past president of New Hampshire Environmental Educators, as well as an active participant in the NH Science Teacher Leaders Group. Susan began her career as a forester and says she migrated toward education to ensure the public understands basic scientific principles.
Reeda Hart has worked in the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics at Northern Kentucky University for the past seven years. In her position as science outreach specialist, she takes PLT into classrooms in six school systems, integrating the environment into academic lessons and modeling teaching practices for teachers. Over a three-year period in which Reeda worked with six schools, the schools’ Academic Index scores rose significantly. An elementary school teacher for 27 years, she has created units on topics ranging from water to energy to life cycles, using PLT as a foundation to provide interactive content that supplements the teaching of core subjects, methods for elaboration, and assessment tools. She helped develop PLT’s new Early Childhood program on the national level; in addition, her university is now beginning an Early Childhood Alliance to provide PLT training to local preschool teachers.
Kurtis Koll, professor of physical sciences at Cameron University in Oklahoma, created a series of environmental education short courses for pre-service science teachers that he opens to other students, too. Word has spread about his enthusiasm and creativity as a teacher, and the courses, which he teaches along with his regular course load of semester-long science classes, are popular across the campus. He takes students to state and national parks and wildlife management areas to investigate local environmental issues, and blends this experience with discussions about local, national, and global current events. Koll also trains teachers from local school districts to use PLT with their students. He uses PLT’s hands-on activities with scout groups, home-schoolers, and adults at public outreach events, and conducts “natural experience” programs with youth in the Comanche Nation Youth Program and the Wichita-Caddo Tribal Youth Program.
For more than 28 years, Debra Wagner has brought the environment into her classroom, and taken her students outdoors to learn. She is a 4th-grade teacher at St. Paul Lutheran School in Florida. Debra's love of the land is contagious, and many of her projects (including an annual “Celebrate Creation” week) involve students throughout the entire PreK-eighth grade school, their parents, and the community. Through her efforts, St. Paul is a PLT-certified school, a Nationally Certified Schoolyard Habitat, and is now part of the national PLT GreenSchools! program in which students investigate a wide range of environmental issues and design action projects to reduce their school’s environmental footprint. Debra serves as a mentor to PLT workshop facilitators and participates in initiatives at the University of Florida to provide reading exercises and writing prompts for PLT activities to improve literacy.
“The range of jobs of these educators shows the many ways that environmental education benefits adults and children,” said Kathy McGlauflin, Director of Project Learning Tree and Senior Vice President of Education at the American Forest Foundation. “At all grade levels, inside the classroom and outdoors, teaching kids directly or reaching them through training current or future teachers, these outstanding educators open up new ways to learn.”
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