Partnering for Environmental Literacy (continued)
tors, and sustain community partnerships that support Ocean Literacy. Nationally, seven Ocean Literacy principles and support- ing fundamental concepts have been developed that outline the ocean content that a person should know. This group of teachers created an Ocean Literacy guidance document for their peers that align these Ocean Literacy principles and the Oregon state science content standards. These projects were a place for the initiative to gain some
grounding and guidance in scaling things up to reach all teachers in the district. They provided us a more comprehensive needs as- sessment around Ocean Literacy in Lincoln County and guidance to make adjustments to our implementation strategy. This insight has insured that the implementation of the initiative is sustainable and not dependent on a singular funding source, spirited indi- vidual, etc.
Ocean Literacy Provides a Context In Lincoln County, Ocean Literacy is a
context we are developing for learning. How- ever for the majority of teachers and admin- istrators, there was a need to more explicitly connect Ocean Literacy to the existing list of expectations they had. There was a significant need to provide professional development and cooperative opportunities for teachers and administrators to identify how Ocean Literacy could be used as a context for meeting existing state, district and school learning objectives. In initial efforts, professional develop-
ment was largely concentrated around marine science and the ocean as a context for sci- ence instruction. Lincoln County elementary teachers communicated barriers to including marine science in the classroom because of the emphasis on student success in language arts and math. For middle and high school teachers, teachers responsible for other subject areas saw little value including marine science because it wasn’t inherently relevant to their curriculum. It quickly became evident that
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to achieve our Ocean Literacy goals, the ocean needed to be a context for learning in multiple subject areas: art, literature, math, engineering, writing, technology, social science, etc. The priority for the 2011-2012 school year has been bring-
ing the Ocean Literacy goal to all 200+ teachers and administra- tors in Lincoln County. In August 2011, the district allocated an entire paid in-service day for every teacher and administrator the week prior to the start of the school year for an Ocean Literacy Symposium. Every K-12 teacher and administrator in the district congregated in a single place to learn tangible ways to use Ocean Literacy as a context for learning in all subject areas. Nearly 50 break-out sessions were facilitated by Lincoln County teach- ers that could speak to their tried methods of imbedding Ocean Literacy in their curriculum. The Symposium also called on the expertise of community partners whom provided additional ap- proaches and resources for making the ocean relevant in multiple subject areas. The Ocean Literacy Initiative has also identified professional development needs independent of Ocean Literacy. Specifically,
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