Districtwide FieldSTEM
Olympia Teachers Try Out Locally Relevant Curriculum with PEI
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Employees at Olympia School District’s central office would have seen an unusual sight if they looked out their windows on December 11th: a group of middle school teachers repeatedly walking around the building, looking up and down, as they attempted to determine how stormwater flowed from the roof to the ground.
“Their job was to map how water flowed at their school, but they were at the district office, which isn’t as familiar,” says PEI’s South Sound FieldSTEM Coordinator Lauren Troyer. “As they were walking around the building trying to figure out where the water that lands on the roof goes, they couldn’t find any downspouts. They really got engaged in the problem, just like students would.”
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Career Connections
Teachers Inspired to Seek Community Partners at Festive Forestry Sector Workshop
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An in-person Thursday night workshop at the PEI office in December turned out to be less like a training and more like a party. The teachers who attended were all already engaging in outdoor learning with their students, and guest speakers stayed for all or most of the session to share ideas and perspectives, even after their presentations ended.
“It was a really fun night,” says Molly Griffiths, PEI’s Associate Director, Puget Sound Region. “We had a great time. The teachers were able to have conversations about the work they’re doing and everyone shared ideas, books and opportunities for collaboration.”
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Dual Language Programming
North Thurston Teachers Explore Dual Language STEM
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The saying ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is especially true when it comes to dual-language learning, as a group of North Thurston Public Schools teachers discovered at a January workshop.
During a nature journaling exercise, the instructions were in pictures rather than in words. “We highlighted using pictures as instructions so that even if you don’t speak the language, you can understand what the assignment is asking you to do,” says PEI’s South Sound FieldSTEM Coordinator Lauren Troyer, “because pictures are universal.”
Troyer and Multicultural Engagement Coordinator Lourdes Flores co-facilitated two dual language workshops during an in-service day for North Thurston teachers: one for elementary grades and one for secondary.
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Bilingual Education
Bilingual Workshop Introduces Language Standards Through . . . Wetlands!
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"Stem and Spanish!!”
“STEM Professional Development is never for Dual Language educators.”
Those comments are the answers that two participants at a recent Bilingual ELA Performance Task workshop gave to the question, “Why attend?” Spanish-language resources for science and STEM are indeed rare. PEI’s Multicultural Engagement Coordinator Lourdes Flores is engaged in making sure that Bilingual and Dual Language teachers throughout Washington know they exist.
The virtual statewide workshop was part of that effort. Thirteen teachers attended the workshop, which Flores co-facilitated with PEI’s Lower Columbia FieldSTEM Coordinator Emily Newman. The verbal component was almost entirely in Spanish, while the presentation slides were bilingual.
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Climate Science Education
High School Students Respond to Local Climate Action Plans
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Note: PEI served as the fiscal sponsor for a civic engagement curriculum development project led by Lisa Eschenbach and David Ketter. Now that curriculum, Student Climate Assembly: Climate Change in the Civics Classroom, is complete. In the following article, Eschenbach shares the development process and ways educators can apply the curriculum.
The Student Climate Assembly (SCA) curriculum equips students with the knowledge and skills to engage meaningfully with climate change by integrating social studies and science for a holistic understanding of its social, economic, political, and environmental impacts.
In September 2024, we published a high-school civics unit the Student Climate Assembly: Climate Change in the Civics Classroom on OSPI’s OER website. It is FREE for civics and other teachers to use. This high school civics unit engages students in addressing climate change at the local level. Through active participation in climate assemblies, students:
- learn about the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change
- analyze local climate action plans and deliberate on their effectiveness
- present their findings to their city, county or tribal council as a culmination of their work
- meet several civics courses' requirements.
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Tools & Tips for Teachers
What Lives on My School Ground?
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Kindergarten teachers, this one's for you. Through this schoolyard investigation, kindergarten students will hone their intuitive sense of biology and in the process discover what conditions are required for life. Students will also investigate how sunlight impacts the temperature of surfaces. Finally, students will engineer and test a shelter that can change a surface’s temperature to make it more compatible with a potential schoolyard creature.
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| Date |
Workshop |
Location |
| March 8 |
WDFW Baby Wildlife |
Statewide |
| February 25 + March 11 |
FieldDesign |
Statewide |
| February 25 – May 27 |
Braiding Sweetgrass Book Study |
Statewide |
| February 27 - 28 |
Career Connected Learning YESS Workshop |
Statewide, in-person in Wenatchee |
| March 4 |
Schoolyard Investigations K-1– Spanish |
Statewide |
| March 8 |
Communities Wetland Education |
Northwest, in-person in Padilla Bay |
| March 11 |
Schoolyard Investigations 2–3 - Spanish |
Statewide |
| March 23-26 |
Outdoor Schools for All Spring Training |
Statewide, in-person near Spokane |
View PEI's calendar to learn more.
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With Gratitude
Thank you January's donors and funders!
Bill Monahan
Catherine Taylor
Chuck Lennox
Gareth Waugh
Jessica Josephs
John Ison
The Tulalip Tribe
Washington State Recreation and Conservation Office
WA SFI State Implementation Committee (SIC)
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