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.

Teach students about the environment using the Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI) curriculum

Come to the Academy to join CalRecycle educators in a dynamic professional development training session using the groundbreaking EEI Curriculum. Engage in interactive lessons from two EEI Curriculum units: one History/Social Science and one Science.

All attending teachers will receive complimentary materials and components for one EEI Curriculum unit of their choice from a pre-selected list.

Date & Time: Thursday, February 28, 2013, 4-6 PM

Place: California Academy of Sciences

Who: Teachers grades K-8, High School teachers welcome.

Attendance is limited; please register by February 22, 2013.

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

To register or if you have questions:
Please email Lucy Christensen or call (916) 323-5551.

EEI Trainings at the Academy are made possible by the generous support of Friends of Environmental Education.

Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI) and Skyline College will be hosting a Curriculum Workshop on their new Sustainability Certificate in Green Transportation. This interactive and informative workshop will be hosted at Skyline College for high school educators.

WHEN: Thursday, February 28, 2013, at 4-8pm
WHERE: Skyline College’s Student/Community Center in Building 6, Room 202 (second floor)
COST: Free – including the curriculum, a teacher toolkit and a light dinner

High school faculty attending will receive the training, lesson plans and teacher toolkit to easily teach this interesting and exciting subject matter right away. The teacher toolkit includes 6 solar car kits and all specialized materials for hands-on activities and experiments. Participating teachers can earn 1 CEU.

Hands-on exercises include:

• Envisioning a sustainable future
• Learning to make biodiesel
• Constructing a solar car
• Developing a school green transportation policy and campaign
• Learning about careers in green transportation through informational interviews, job shadowing and internships

Please RSVP to Rita Gulli by email or phone 650.738.4491. The first 20 teachers will receive the curriculum toolkit.

**NOTE: This is not an Academy sponsored event. Please direct all questions and requests for more information directly to Rita Gulli.**

 
Winged Ambassadors
 
Ocean Literacy Through the Eyes of an Albatross
 
Professional Development Workshop for grade 6-12 Educators

What?
Winged Ambassadors is a five lesson activity package that helps students to learn about seabirds, the ocean, and marine and land debris. Albatrosses traverse vast oceanic regions searching for floating food, and often ingest plastic trash and feed it to their chicks. The five activities in this unit are inquiry-based science instruction and are aligned to standards for grades 6-8, with extensions for grades 9-12.

Each lesson includes a lesson plan with suggested discussion questions, ideas for differentiation, extensions, suggestions for videos and Internet links. Also included are student worksheets and handouts and other materials for the teacher.

Who?
This workshop will be useful to classroom teachers and others who work with children.

Where?
P.R.B.O./Conservation Science: 3820 Cypress Drive, Petaluma

When?
Wednesday, October 24, 2012, 4:00 – 7:00 p.m.

For more information and to register, click here.

**NOTE: This is not an Academy sponsored program. Please direct all questions and requests for more information directly to Jill McIntyre for registration inquiries or Mike Roa for content questions.**

Come to the Academy to join CalRecycle 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 K-12 curriculum.

What: EEI Curriculum Professional Development Training
When: Thursday, September 20, 2012, from 4-6 p.m.
Who: Grades 6-12 Teachers
Cost: Free! And you can take home a curriculum sample!

How to Register: Contact Lucy Christensen at (916) 323-5551 or Lucy.Christensen@CalRecycle.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 teachers. Join CalRecycle 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 California.

“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 Friends of Environmental Education.

**NOTE: This is not an Academy run activity. Please direct all questions and requests for more information directly to Lucy Christensen.**