by Dawn Miller-Walker (May 2019)

A couple of competitions recently held in Florida were the Florida Envirothon at the end of April and the P3 Eco-Challenge awards ceremony in May. We know there are many more environmental competitions throughout Florida - so let us here at LEEF know so we can advertise as well announce winners!

The Florida Envirothon is a hands-on environmental problem-solving competition for high school-aged students. Participating teams complete training and testing in five natural resource categories including: aquatic ecology, forestry, soil & land use, wildlife and an annual changing current environmental issue. The Envirothon works in partnership with local conservation districts, forestry associations, educators, and cooperating natural resource agencies to organize and conduct competitions on the local, regional, state, and/or provincial level. Winning teams from each state and province advance to the North American Envirothon for an opportunity to compete for recognition, scholarships, and prizes. The Envirothon program is an effective educational tool, capable of supplementing environmental education both inside and outside the classroom. Teams work collaboratively to develop their knowledge of ecology and natural resource management and to practice their environmental problem-solving skills in preparation for Envirothon competitions.

The 2019 Florida Envirothon winners were (county teams listed): 1st Overall: Volusia, 2nd Overall: Indian River, 3rd Overall Osceola, Aquatic Ecology: Hillsborough, Current Issue: Broward, Forestry: Lake, Soil & Land Use: Citrus, Wildlife: Manatee, and Oral Presentation: Duval.

Broward County Public Schools P3 Eco-Challenge recognizes and rewards traditional and charter Broward County schools, teachers, students, non-instructional and custodial staff for their efforts to learn about and implement environmentally sustainable measures and green initiatives within their schools and communities. The Broward P3 Eco-Challenge initiative is a multi-divisional and organizational effort among the Applied Learning Department of the Office of Academics, Environmental Health & Safety Department, Information & Technology Department of BCPS, and our partners, Broward County Environmental Planning and Community Resilience Division and the Environmental Conservation Organization (ECO). There are two types of P3 challenges:

P3 School Challenge – For schools that demonstrate participation in or implementation of different sustainability metrics based on a rubric composed of 6 comprehensive categories (1st place winners listed after each category):

Overall - Driftwood Middle School

School Grounds Enhancement - Crystal Lake Middle School

School Sustainability - Driftwood Middle School

Curriculum Integration - McFatter Tech High School

Community Involvement - South Plantation High School

Administrative Support - Dania Elementary School

Innovation/Special Projects - Beachside Montessori Village

Environmental Stewardship Recognition – For Broward County teachers, students, non-instructional and custodial staff who show evidence of promoting civic responsibility, environmental stewardship, and education of environmental issues through awareness and involvement, professional development/affiliation, instructional soundness/creativity, and skill building. The 1st place winners listed after each category:

Elementary School Student - Joseph Pino

Middle School Student - Khushi Desai

High School Student - Derod Deal

Elementary School Educator - Joanne Ewart

Middle School Educator - Carolyn San Angelo

High School Educator - Dr. Jody Berman

Non-instructional - Julia Chia

Custodial - Verol Frith

LEEF is collecting photos, articles, newsletters, conference programs, etc. to help document our many years serving Florida's EE community. If you have any items that will help complete our history, please email them to leef.florida@gmail.com .

SciStarter posted a graphic-designed version of the month of May from their “Year in Citizen Science” Google Calendar. You can add to the Google Calendar whenever you wish, to any month in the year, by emailing Erica Chenoweth at EricaC@SciStarter.org. Each month, Erica will release a printable version of the calendar featuring some of the events from the Google Calendar.

You can also copy events from their public Google Calendar to your own personal Google Calendar. Simply click the event you’re interested in and click “copy to my calendar.”

If you have any questions or just want to chat about science, feel free to reach out to Erica! She’s in the CitSci Convos Facebook group hosted by SciStarter, so feel free to post in there, as well, if you want to talk about ways you’re organizing events to celebrate citizen science.

Visit their blog for more information: https://blog.scistarter.com/2019/05/a-year-in-citizen-science-calendar-may/

Find a Project

eeAdvocate: An Advocacy Guide for Environmental Education Professionals & Supporters is designed to help you become a better and more confident advocate for environmental education (EE) and to bring more support and funding to the field. For EE to reach its full potential, advocacy at all levels of government—local school boards, state legislatures, state and federal agencies, and federal Congressional and Senatorial outreach—is crucial. This guide is focused primarily on advocating with your federal representatives, because these legislators are particularly important to our national work to support environmental education.

Key topics are covered in the guide- find it here: https://naaee.org/eepro/resources/eeadvocate

Climate Change -- free book for teachers:

Zabel, I. H. H., D. Duggan-Haas, and R. M. Ross (eds.), 2017, The Teacher-Friendly Guide to Climate Change. Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York, 284 pp.

PDF download: https://priweb.org/downloads/pubs/TFG-ClimateChange-Complete.pdf

Boxed versions soon available of County’s Game of Floods

San Rafael, CA – Further proving that climate change education can be fun, the County of Marin is coming up with a boxed version of its award-winning Game of Floods, which teaches players about adaptation choices to for inevitable sea level rise. The County is taking online pre-orders through April 5. Each set will be about $36 to recover costs, plus around $10 for shipping.

Players work around the board collaboratively and discuss adaptation strategies considering their effectiveness, impacts and relative costs. New boxed game features include a fixed budget, news cards, special action cards, and social and environmental health indicators.

The game, created by Community Development Agency (CDA) staff members and their water resources cohorts from the Department of Public Works, is designed to engage and educate the community about sea level rise vulnerability and adaptation. It allows players to design solutions that protect entire communities as well as individual properties to address the permanent flooding impacts of sea level rise. The challenge requires collective approaches to build solutions that protect access, airports, wastewater treatment facilities as well as smaller communities while dealing with uncertainty and balancing priorities among players.

The game received the Gold 2017 National Planning Achievement Award for Public Outreach from the American Planning Association (APA). Previously it received the California APA’s Public Outreach Award of Excellence, a California State Association of Counties’ Merit Award and the top County of Marin Innovation “Inny” Award.

The Project WILD/Aquatic WILD workshop a couple weekends ago was the perfect way to spend a rainy day in Dania Beach. The weather wasn’t conducive to doing much outside, but thankfully we weren’t dealing with the freezing temperatures of the Midwest! Educators from multiple counties, some driving over an hour and half came to participate in a fun, hands-on and very wild workshop held at Nova Southeastern University’s Oceanographic Center who sponsored the location. The diversity of this group was the best I’ve ever had: from mothers who want to teach their children more about our fascinating planet by getting them outside more to explore, to government employees (state and county) who work with a variety of people of all ages, formal educators and informal educators! The best part about WILD workshops is the sharing. I’ve been facilitating these workshops for a long time – I enjoy teaching children ages 3-college, but teacher workshops/professional development is not only a way for me to share the ways I modify and tweak programs to make them work for me, but I get to learn from them. When running a workshop, keeping an open mind about how others will do the exact same activity is how I continue to learn and build my ideas. Without the sharing, I would get bored and my activities would be stagnated. It is so important to not only teach and share what you know, but to open yourself up to the creativeness of others. It is because of workshops like these, along with conferences through LEEF, FMSEA and FAST (and there are many others to attend) that I continually grow. Environmental Education isn’t just for the children, but for us adults to. They say, scientists are just adults who want to continue to explore like children!!!

Pictured: Fashion A Fish/Adaptation Artistry/Color Crazy/Designing A Habitat… If I were going to only get to choose one PW/PAW activity to do for the rest of my teaching life, it would be my various ways of teaching this (I don’t always use all the different names for the same general activity – I call it all Fashion A Fish)!!! As a marine biologist, this is already in my blood… and modifying the various ways to teach these concepts to ages 2 through senior citizens, I get totally pumped. So here are some pictures of my modified activities… a fish costume that my mother-in-law helped me make (yes, I can sew slightly)… the drawing version (I created a very detailed set of ID charts for the body types, mouth shapes, teeth, caudal fins, scales, camouflage, and reproduction) that includes not only external anatomy and adaptation, but a scientific name, common name and behavior due to their adaptations… another one is based on the drawing, but they blindly choose the parts and attach to a felt board and come up with the new species information… and lastly, after going over the ID charts, they use “trash to treasure” items (things most people just throw out because it held something they bought, was the left over of something they used, was broken, etc…) to create a physical replica of their new species then they have to present it to the group giving all the species information adding where they discovered it, how it behaves and even possibly how it mates.

Not only do I look forward to the next WILD workshop I will facilitate in the future but going to other’s various workshops and conference sessions to pick up more ammunition for Environmental Education! If you are interested in having WILD workshops (Project WILD, Aquatic WILD, Growing Up WILD, Flying WILD, Black Bear, and Schoolyard Wildlife) in your area, contact Anita.Forester@myfwc.com to get you in touch with someone in your region.