2000 Outstanding Educators

Karen Lund, Kent Kinney, Julie Russell, Sidney Hime, Angie Davis

Julie Russell
Bend, Oregon
Julie is a 4th grade teacher at Kenwood Elementary. She participated in her first PLT educator workshop after graduating from Western Oregon University during the summer of 1995. The following fall she was able to test out many of the PLT activities when hired by Corvallis Public School District as a substitute teacher. Julie worked at many of the elementary and middle schools in the district, making her name as the "PLT substitute."

In the summer of 1996, Julie attended a PLT Facilitator Training Workshop and became the local team leader for her region. Because she found the PLT lessons so helpful in her role as substitute teacher, she requested that we begin offering workshops with this specific audience in mind. With Julie's input and planning during the following year, Oregon PLT offered several successful workshops tailored to substitutes' needs. One of her suggestions was to prepare file folders complete with everything a teacher would need (props, overhead masters, supplementary materials, suggestions for literature tie-ins, etc.) in order to be most effective teaching each activity.

Julie is an exceptional advocate for the PLT program and has clearly demonstrated a passion for regularly using PLT in her classroom. Through her tremendous energy and dedication to bringing environmental education forth using PLT, Julie has served as an excellent example, inspiring hundreds of Oregon educators and making a lasting impact upon those students fortunate enough to call her their teacher.

Sidney Hime
Lincoln, Nebraska
Sidney is the Education Specialist at Lower Platte South Natural Resources District (LPSNRD). She has been involved with PLT in Nebraska as a facilitator for six years and has been an active member of Nebraska's PLT state steering committee for the last year and a half. Sidney has been instrumental in facilitating recent educator workshops and encouraging Natural Resources District staff throughout the state to become PLT facilitators.

Syd constantly demonstrates her commitment to environmental education. Most recently she has been involved in planning an EPA Region 7 Environmental Education Leadership Clinic for Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa. The leadership clinic will focus on capacity building in this four-state region and will be hosted by Nebraska during the summer of 2000. Syd is also involved in facilitating environmental education festivals for elementary age students in southeastern Nebraska. Six years ago, she initiated the first Earth Wellness Festival in Lincoln. Each year, 3000 fifth grade students learn about the environment through hands-on activities like Project Learning Tree.

Kent Kinney
Orosi, California
Kent teaches Environmental Science, Environmental Biology, Ornamental Horticulture, and Agricultural Mechanics to 9th -12th grade students. He initiated an environmental education program with a class curriculum of forestry and outdoor recreation. Kent has assisted teachers from schools throughout California in starting their own environmental education programs. To provide extended learning opportunities, Kent coordinated an adopt-a-trail program with the USDA Forest Service. He and his students twice earned national honors through the Building Our American Communities program. The recreational trail constructed by his youth group has served to provide a safe route to a unique scenic overlook, while protecting a major archeological village site in the Kings River Special Management Area. Kent's students won the 1999 California State Championship in the Natural Resources Contest. Kent organized the first curriculum integration program at his high school in order to create a cooperative teaching effort that included the agriculture, mathematics, English, and industrial arts departments. Bringing instructors from each of these programs together to teach an environmental conservation theme proved to be a unifying force at that school. The project culminated with a three-day camp trip with the instructors and 25 students on the Norris Ranch. He established photo plot monitoring, aquatic environment research, and rangeland research. Kent has offered two presentations for teachers who are interested in participating in similar research at that facility. He is encouraging teachers to use Project Learning Tree lessons when they visit the ranch with their students.

Kent has a passion for teaching and a calling to encourage people to respect the Earth's natural resources. He wants to guide as many young people as possible into environmental careers. And for those who don't choose to pursue this work, he strives to arm them with sound scientific knowledge so they will be wise advocates of environmental conservation.

Angie Davis
Macon, Georgia
Angie retired this past November after over 30 years of service to the education community and continues to serve on the State Steering Committee and promote PLT. Her 22-year teaching career included Classroom Teacher of English and Journalism, Assistant Professor of English at Waycross College and Macon College, and Adjunct Professor at Mercer University in Macon. During the entire decade of the 1990s, Angie promoted, supported, and elevated Georgia's PLT Program on regional, statewide, and personal levels.

Angie led the process of correlating the K-8 Guide with Georgia's Quality Core Curriculum twice! Her work enabled Georgia PLT to offer this as a real selling point to teachers. This was an awesome task requiring hundreds of hours of coordination, compilation and review to ensure teachers would consider the PLT guide a more useable teaching tool. Within one year of becoming a facilitator, Angie won the Proctor & Gamble Cellulose Award for Outstanding Contributions to Georgia PLT in the middle Georgia area. The following year, she won Georgia PLT Facilitator of the Year for conducting the largest number of educator workshops. Due to her efforts, workshops were conducted in every county in her seven county region. Her region was the first to achieve total coverage. Angie conducted several inspiring presentations at Facilitator Reunion Workshops, Field Coordinator Workshops, and even the National PLT Conference in St. Louis.

Karen Lund
Great Meadows, New Jersey
Karen is part of the 8th grade team at Great Meadows Middle School. She is an In-Class Support Special Educator for the Language Arts and Math programs and also provides out of class support for Social Studies and Science. Karen emphasizes the importance of environmental education as an "everyday" part of the middle school educational program. She continues to gain the support of administrators, ensuring the PLT program continues to be initiated throughout the district. She has lobbied her school district to hire an environmental education teacher to facilitate the outdoor classroom program and to ensure that the interdisciplinary, constructivist vision of PLT becomes commonplace within the schools. As a mentor, she advises them on curriculum development by showing them the ways PLT has helped her, and she is sure to suggest they attend a PLT workshop! Karen is beginning to set up a support group for educators trying to develop outdoor classrooms.

Her ongoing commitment to environmental education is demonstrated not only by the workshops she conducts but by the support she gives her fellow educators as they work to put PLT into action throughout the curriculum. Karen demonstrates to her colleagues how "user friendly" the PLT activities are and how they lead students toward discovery learning while developing critical thinking and creative problem solving skills. This enthusiasm encourages many educators to value PLT's diverse nature.