Educating Educators and their Students Everywhere to Prevent New Invaders

Session: 17. - Great Lakes Outreach and Education

Joan Chadde, Director, Center for Science & Environmental Outreach, Michigan Technological University, [email protected]
Jeffrey Ram, Wayne State University, Dept. of Physiology, [email protected]

Abstract

This project uses Teacher Professional Development workshops statewide to educate about invasive species and prevent their release. Teachers learn how invasive species education helps them to achieve Michigan's Science Standards. Deliverables include hands-on activities, lesson plans, online educational materials, and facilitation of Learning Communities for long-term and broader impact.  This project uses Teacher Professional Development workshops statewide to educate about invasive species and prevent their release. Deliverables include hands-on activities, lesson plans, online educational materials. Seemingly harmless but careless actions by ordinary citizens have led to new and harmful invasions by non-native species and the spread of disease to native species.. Professional development workshops have been shown to be effective tools for building teachers' knowledge, confidence, and enthusiasm for teaching science and for creating place-based learning models that can change student knowledge and behavior and that of their families. By showing teachers how teaching about invasive species helps them to achieve education goals in Michigan's Science Standards (Michigan Department of Education 2015) this project will get teacher "buy-in" to using the educational materials and lesson plans that this project will create. Through the impact that teaching teachers will have on their students, this project’s impact will will be multiplied many-fold.

1. Keyword
education

2. Keyword
invasive species

3. Keyword
outreach