Upcoming Courses

Project Learning Tree: Pre-K-8 (Elective)

This hands-on course provides ways to integrate environmental concepts and activities into the classroom curriculum. You'll learn how to use the forest as a window for students to explore their dependence on natural resources and make decisions on environmental issues. The course is designed to help your students develop awareness, appreciation, understanding, and skills while nurturing critical and creative thinking. The Project Learning Tree activity guide is correlated to California's science, English/language arts, and history/social science standards plus the Girl Scout standards, and it works with a forest or just one tree! There are multiple opportunities for service learning, as the guide addresses management issues, energy, cultural perspectives, ecosystems, and more. The guide includes necessary background information, so it is especially useful for nonscience majors. It is available only through workshops. Directions to location will be sent to enrolled participants before the first meeting. NOTE: Two-hour written project required.

Instructor: Camra Wolff

Wacky Watersheds: Making the South Bay Watershed Connection to Your Classroom (Elective)

Using the Environmental Education classroom activity guide, South Bay Water Connections, classroom participants will become familiar with the various issues affecting the Santa Clara Basin watershed and develop a plan for integrating the activities and issues into their own classroom, and assessing student understanding of the concepts and principles presented. Taking what you already do in your classrooms, this course is designed to help you develop a greater ability to integrate environmental education into all parts of your curricula, including English/Language Arts, history/social sciences, mathematics as well as science. Participants will receive a copy of the South Bay Water Connections curriculum guide.

Instructors: Joanna De Sa, Michele Young, Tamara Gilbert

Project WET (Elective)

In a hands-on, how-to format, teachers work with a trained facilitator for Project WET to gain the knowledge and skills to deliver their own lessons on water resources. The goal of Project WET is to facilitate and promote awareness, appreciation, knowledge and stewardship of water resources through the development and dissemination of classroom-ready teaching aids, and through the establishment of state and internationally sponsored Project WET programs.

The Project WET Curriculum and Activity Guide, for kindergarten through 12th grades, is a collection of innovative, water-related activities that are hands on, easy to use and fun. The Guide provides a thorough water education program and addresses water's chemical and physical properties, quantity and quality issues, aquatic wildlife, ecosystems and management strategies. The Guide is available only through workshops provided by trained facilitators. Non-science majors are especially encouraged to participate.

Instructor: Kathy Machado

Achieving State Standards through Environmental Education (Core)

Don't sacrifice innovative lesson plans to achieve State standards! Recent studies have shown that high quality environmental education practices--interdisciplinary, hands-on learning based in the local natural and community environments--indeed achieve standards and result in improved scores on standardized tests. Work has been done to demonstrate how supplemental curricula correlate with California's standards in English-language arts, history/social sciences, mathematics, and science. Course participants assess interdisciplinary activities to determine how well they achieve standards and learn to make simple revisions so favorite activities align to standards.

Instructor: Lori Mann

Neighborhood Nature: Connecting Kids to Their Environment (Core)

Tropical rainforests, arctic tundra, shifting desert sands and vast coral reefs. The images these names evoke may excite your passion and interest in preserving these fragile, important environments. Asphalt parking lots, undeveloped weed patches, backyard gardens, and city parks may not evoke quite the same degree of passion. However, the more immediate environments that comprise your world and that of your students are equally significant and can be just as interesting. Nature abounds in urban and suburban settings, with complex ecological relationships playing out right under our noses. This course will teach methods for making this local drama real and meaningful, turning your neighborhood into a rich and rewarding classroom. It will also demonstrate ways to connect children to nature in their neighborhood while helping you teach your required curriculum.

Instructor: Lori Mann