Teachers’ Lounge

Our friends over at NatureBridge Golden Gate are offering teacher professional development programs! They can help you bring the natural world into your classroom to help teach science, math, and language arts standards.

Bring the Outside In
Saturday, February 23, 2013
9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Learn simple strategies for building community, using nature in lessons, and getting your students outdoors. Open to any educator, traditional and nontraditional.

Lessons from the Ocean
Saturday, March 23, 2013
9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Use the ocean to teach math, science, and language arts skills. Learn a marine food web activity, explore human impacts on ocean resources, and learn about cultural connections to the bay and the ocean. Content is focused on grades four to eight.

Our Changing Climate
Saturday, April 13, 2013
9:30 am – 3:30 pm

Learn to teach basic climate science and empower your students to take action. Practice teaching the carbon cycle, investigate “garbology,” and develop simple student action projects. Content is focused on grades five to eight.

Workshops will be held in San Francisco. They are FREE and include lunch and take-away teaching toolkits. Stipends are available for teacher teams from the same school who attend two or more workshops and for teachers who can evidence implementation of any climate change materials ($100 per person!).

For more information visit their website.

A city-wide survey is underway to create an Outdoor Bill of Rights for kids growing up in San Francisco. What are your students’ favorites?

The San Francisco Children and Nature Forum envisions a city in which all children play, learn, and grow with nature in their everyday lives.

And, they are currently requesting feedback from school-aged kids themselves as to which rights are most important to them!

If you are a parent or a teacher of kids in grades preK-12, why not survey their opinion?

The organization provides Tips for Adults in leading youth in voting for the Children’s Outdoor Bill of Rights. You can access the survey and tips here, or you can take the survey directly on their website.

Please email results to sfchildreninnature@gmail.com by February 15th, or take the online survey here!

 
Get your students excited about science outside of the classroom or participate in teacher events throughout the Bay Area.

From October 25 to November 3, 2012, the Bay Area will come alive with science and technology activities – lectures, debates, and exhibitions from Santa Rosa to San Jose. For the complete program schedule visit the Bay Area Science Festival website.

 
Discovery Days

Encourage your students to spend a day doing science. Participate in programs chock-full of interactive exhibits, experiments, games, and shows, all meant to entertain and inspire.

• Discovery Days at AT&T Park: Saturday, November 3, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm in San Francisco
• Discovery Days – North Bay: Saturday, October 27, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa
• Romberg Tiburon Center Discovery Day Open House: Sunday, October 21, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm in Sausalito

 
Events for Educators

Educator Giveaway: South San Francisco
Thanks to donations from labs and companies across the Bay Area, educators will have access to high quality materials and scientific equipment for their classrooms at the Bio-link Depot. Everything from pipettes to glassware to safety equipment will be given away for free! The give-away on Saturday October 27 at 10:00 am – 12:00 pm are sponsored by BABEC and CCSF’s BIO-LINK Depot. Please bring school/educator ID.

Educator Extravaganza
The Academy’s own Educator Extravaganza is also part of the Bay Area Science Festival this year. On Saturday, November 3, 2012, join fellow educators to explore the California Academy of Sciences inside and out. Walk away with resources, activities and inspiration to bring science into your classroom in exciting new ways. Advance registration is required, and space is limited! For more information and to register for the Extravaganza, visit the event’s website.

The people over at the Crissy Field Center, part of the Golden Gate National Park, have created an excellent guide to the outdoor areas of San Francisco. With great descriptions of the City’s watersheds and what you can find at the parks and outdoor spaces, this resource can help you make the most of what is just outside your school’s door! See the following description from their website:
 
“Explore San Francisco’s natural history with your students.

Finding Urban Nature: An Educators’ Guide to Exploring San Francisco Natural History is not curriculum or a book of activities. It is written for adults who have an interest in natural history—and who are also educators. It will help you locate and learn about parks and natural areas near your schools, as well as provide enough background information so that you will feel comfortable exploring these areas with your students. Whether or not you are well-versed in the “whys” and “hows” of the natural world, we hope this guide will enable you to be a naturalist and to share that experience with your students.”

You can download a pdf of the guide, by scrolling down to the bottom of their website.

Come to the Academy to join CalEPA educators in a dynamic and engaging professional development training session with the California EEI Curriculum (Education and the Environment Initiative)! They can’t wait to show you the depth and flexibility there is to this innovative, original K-12 curriculum.

What: EEI Curriculum Professional Development Training
When: Thursday, January 12, 2012, from 4-6 p.m.
Who: K-5 Teachers
Cost: Free! And you can take home a curriculum sample!

How to Register: Contact Kirk Amato at (916) 341-6769 or kamato@calepa.ca.gov

And … stay a little later because you’re invited to join us after the session with complimentary admission to NightLife!

This EEI Curriculum training is offered at no charge for Bay Area teachers. Join us to learn how the standards-based and environment-based EEI Curriculum teaches selected Science and History-Social Science standards to mastery. The EEI also solidly addresses California English Language Arts standards (K-3), as well as California common Core standards for ELA and Literacy (K-12).

Sign up to attend and you’ll receive a complimentary DVD when you complete the training. Plus, complimentary printed units with classroom sets of student materials will be offered to all attendees. You can preview the units at www.CaliforniaEEI.org at any time. They can also be downloaded for free in PDF format – your district does not have to purchase the EEI Curriculum.

There are 85 EEI Curriculum units that cover more than 100 academic content standards for grades K-12, and the EEI uses the environment as a context for learning. Unique features of the EEI include in-depth Teacher Editions to help you teach the standards to mastery, and California-specific case studies help students learn about the environment and important issues right here in their own state.

“To watch students engage with the natural world and make new intellectual connections as a result of their learning is educational gold.”
Ms. Wendy Weller, 2nd Grade

So sign up now and join in for a 2-hour professional development session to learn how you can use the environment to teach the standards to mastery!

EEI Trainings at the Academy are made possible by the generous support of the Pisces Foundation.