teaches teachers to teach
environmental education
Renee Strnad holds a small circular object — a “cookie” — in her hand before passing out similar items to the 26 attentive learners at a recent Project Learning Tree educator workshop.
But this cookie isn’t edible unless you’re a pine bark beetle or a termite. It’s the core of a tree, and Strnad, an environmental educator in the College of Natural Resources, uses it to demonstrate how to count growth rings to determine a tree’s age.
The group, seated recently at picnic tables under a shelter at Wake County’s Crowder District Park in Apex, examines the cookies carefully.
“Remember,” Strnad says, “count either the dark or light rings, not both.”
After everybody completes the job, she shows them on paper plates how they can draw concentric “tree rings” of their lives, with wider spaces marking “good” years, narrower spaces “bad” ones. The exercise also can be used to see if students understand the concept of tree growth rings and to help them talk about their own lives, she says.
Strnad, with the Cooperative Extension Service, is assisted in the day’s activities by Tamara Wade-Roach, Coastal Lumber Co.’s public affairs and legal administration director, and Kelley Stanton, Crowder’s assistant park manager. The trio launches into other exercises, with such titles as “Every Tree for Itself,” “Planet of Plenty,” “Can It Be Real?” and “Birds and Worms.”
“We help people gain an awareness and knowledge of the world around them and their place within it,” Strnad says. “We try to create awareness, appreciation, understanding, skills and commitment to address environmental issues.”
The program, she says, also increases appreciation and tolerance for diverse viewpoints on environmental issues and stimulates the creativity, originality and flexibility needed to resolve environmental problems. It also encourages students to become responsible and productive society members.
Project Learning Tree, an award-winning, interdisciplinary environmental education program for those who work with students from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade, uses the forest as a window into natural and other environments.
With national and international programs, PLT aims to help students apply scientific processes and higher-order thinking skills to resolve environmental problems.
It’s also an instructional activities source, providing workshops and in-service programs for teachers, environmental educators and other youth leaders who take the six-hour workshops.
“All workshop participants are adults who work with youth,” Strnad says. “Some are various educators in formal and non-formal fields, others are involved with 4-H or the Master Gardener program. Some may be with state parks or the Division of Forest Resources.”
In North Carolina,
PLT materials are distributed to about 700 educators a year through
a network of more than 80 facilitators based in 45 different counties,
Strnad says.
—
Art Latham
