BOISE — Half a year after The WaterShed launched 25 new interactive water and climate exhibits, the city of Boise’s water resources education center played host to an annual NASA Earth to Sky climate workshop for teachers.
Since 2008, The WaterShed has provided programming related to water resources, such as tours of the West Boise Water Renewal Facility. The Earth to Sky partnership is NASA’s collaboration with other scientific federal agencies and organizations to improve science education and interpretation.
“The aim of this program is to bring NASA climate scientists to educators throughout Idaho,” Boise Climate Education & Outreach Coordinator Jenny Wolf said. “This is the fourth (annual workshop), and we focus on teaching different ways that teachers can communicate (about the) climate with their audience.”
This year’s theme was Climate Action, dwelling on how educators can discuss and incorporate solutions to climate-related challenges into their teaching and programming — whether at the K-12 level or in a museum or park setting.
Over the course of the three-day event, held Oct. 22-24, participants would formulate lesson ideas in small-group sessions, do hands-on field learning about sustainable agriculture and the impacts of wildfire, and explore the impacts that city and school district planning can make on climate issues like transportation emissions.
They also got the opportunity to stroll the WaterShed’s exhibit gallery and interact with its various stations, like a hands-on sand diorama of a watershed and a water-distribution simulation.
“I’m hoping to develop a unit for my fifth-grade students,” said Audrey Gabrielli, the gifted and talented facilitator at Boise’s Lowell Elementary, as she ran her fingers through the sand of the watershed diorama. “Our theme of the year is relationships, so environmental education ties really well — looking at the biosphere and how animals and humans and water and rocks and ice all interact with each other.”
Misha Smith, a sixth-grade teacher at Hawthorne Elementary in Boise, said that she hoped the workshop would help her to tie her science and language arts curricula together. She typically has her students come up with a question at the beginning of the year about a struggle impacting Idaho’s ecosystem.
“Last year, right after we had the Valley Fire, my students decided their question was going to be wildfire-related. We spent the whole year learning about the impacts of wildfires, and how they’ve increased through the years here in Idaho, and what they can do to help reduce them,” she said. “The overall focus for this year is helping teachers to create an action project, some kind of way of getting their students involved in feeling like they actually can make a positive impact.”
The workshop also included a virtual keynote presentation from NASA climate change outreach and communication coordinator Dr. Ayia Lindquist on building climate-resilient communities all over the country.
“We learn best when we learn in a community,” Earth to Sky outreach specialist Cris White said. “That’s how you exchange ideas, and that’s what Earth to Sky is all about.”