What is Empowered Eco-Education?
Empowered Eco-Education is an Inner Pipeline Seminar course. UW students taking this course have the opportunity to develop their own environment and natural science-based lesson plan and teach it to elementary school students at Concord Elementary in South Park, Seattle. South Park is located next to the Duwamish River. The Duwamish River has been designated a Superfund site, the label given to the most polluted sites in the United States. As both South Park and Concord Elementary have a large number of residents who are people of color and lower income, many of the students we work with regularly experience environmental injustice. It is the goal of Empowered Eco-Education to not only help UW students learn from this experience and gain teaching, communication, organization, and curriculum development skills, but also to educate and empower the Concord students about environmental issues and how to work towards solutions.
Empowered Eco-Education works with the UW Pipeline Project and is generously funded by the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
Empowered Eco-Education works with the UW Pipeline Project and is generously funded by the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
What was my role?
I have done Empowered Eco-Education during all four years of my college career. The first year I was a student taking this course. The following year, the course facilitator and I co-facilitated the course, and during my junior and senior year at UW I have facilitated the course myself. Facilitating a course has been challenging, but very rewarding, and I have learned and developed many skills beyond teaching and creating lesson plans. In particular, leading my own course has taught me how to organize programming, communicate with others, and plan ahead. During these past four years, I have personally developed about 8 lesson plans and overseen the development of an additional 12 lesson plans.
In anticipation of my own graduation, I have also looked into finding another UW student to continue the program in the future and I have created a "facilitator guide" for future program facilitators to reference.
In anticipation of my own graduation, I have also looked into finding another UW student to continue the program in the future and I have created a "facilitator guide" for future program facilitators to reference.
Download a sample lesson plan I have created for Empowered Eco-Education:
empowered_eco_ed_2019_rain_garden_lesson_-_revised.docx | |
File Size: | 10 kb |
File Type: | docx |
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