E2E Grant Project Report—Alaska
By Cathy Rezabeck, Marilyn Sigman and Beverly Parsons D
illingham, Alaska is a rural community in western Alaska with about 2,400 residents, including a substantial population of Yup’ik Eskimos. It has its own school
district with an elementary, middle and secondary school. The only way to get there is by plane or boat - there is no road from anywhere! Anchorage is a one-hour jet ride away. You might think it unlikely that you can compare this scenario to your own, but stay tuned. Key to our success in determining the impact of our environmental education project was our use of a Framework for Systems-Oriented Evaluation.
Evaluate EE Programs for
Systemic Change in Your Community
How to improve the effectiveness of teacher professional development in environmental education
The Alaska Natural Resource and Outdoor Education Association (ANROE) is Alaska’s NAAEE affiliate (www.anroe. net). In 2014 the Environmental Education Office of the EPA awarded a grant “Collective Impact: Advancing Environmental Literacy through Shared Value Creation, Innovation and Collaboration” to four Pacific Northwest states (Alaska, Idaho, Washington and Oregon – EPA’s Region 10). The goal of this Educator to Educator Initiative (E2E) was to develop, disseminate, and evaluate a replicable model for implementing state environmental literacy plans in the Pacific Northwest. The project team for each state chose a “problem of practice” to focus their grant activities. The Alaska team, with Cathy Rezabeck as ANROE’s Project Coordinator, chose to address how to improve the long-term impact and outcomes of professional development in K-12 environmental education. Our intention was to gain insight into how to improve the effectiveness of professional development in environmental education and the methods by which effectiveness was evaluated. The typical professional development formats consisted of a brief session during a teacher in-service, a two-day, one credit workshop, or a 4-5 day two-credit course. All three were essentially “one shot” learning opportunities for teachers with some limited follow-up requirements to report on how they applied what they had learned in their classroom in a brief reflection on change in practice.
We chose to pilot a new model developed by Alaska Sea Grant (ASG) with the goals of accomplishing and documenting sustained changes in teaching practice schoolwide with emphasis on thematic environmental education instruction focused on local environments and outdoor learning on field trips. Our “problem of practice” was relevant to two goals of the Alaska Natural Resource and Environmental Literacy Plan https://akelpdotorg.
files.wordpress.com/2013/02/anrelp_revision_nov20131. pdf: Goal 4: “Enhance professional development for educators, administrators, and community members in natural resource and environmental literacy,” and Goal 5: “Support the development of Alaska school facilities, grounds and local natural areas that provide accessible learning opportunities and serve as community models for healthy living and sustainability.”
ASG wanted to re-invigorate their Sea Week program (re- Educator to Educator (E2E) Initiative Page 48
named as Alaska Seas and Watersheds) in the Dillingham School District and in other Alaska communities where it had been an annual tradition from 1980s into the early 2000s. They developed
www.clearingmagazine.org
(continued on page 50) CLEARING Spring 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
