07/08/2023
research, awareness, action
AEM Educator Ambassadors
Prepared For : AEM Educator Ambassadors
Ashley Hollern AEM Founder and Executive Director
Mission To provide a free web-based platform for teachers who seek to promote innovation, collaboration, and inspiration through highly vetted science resources and experts.
Greetings and welcome! We are AEM, a dedicated group of experienced educators committed to supporting you with a range of local and global tools that you may not be familiar with. Our aim is to demonstrate the tremendous value these resources hold in fostering meaningful and genuine exploration of content within your classrooms. Irrespective of your students' age, our scaffolding model is designed to assist you in seamlessly integrating various topics. Through this approach, your students will gain valuable insights into information literacy, collaborative content sharing, as well as the exciting fields of engineering and prototype design.
Vision Teachers have the tools to engage all students in relevant and purposeful content; relabeling classroom learning with a systems thinking approach.
www.AuthenticExplorationMatters.com
Authentic Exploration
Project Guides During the Coral Project and the WPS Algae Project, I witnessed a clear need for ownership development. Four key roles emerged from the Coral Project and transformed into the several roles identified below. Understanding the responsibility of the role assigned to the student was essential from the beginning. It is important to mention that the roles could change, but at no time was a student unaware of expectations.
What is my job? At the start of the year, I plan a day for students to complete an assignment about themselves. I do this in order to discover their interests and talents. This task establishes a foundation for the entire year.
My students representing the WPS project at the Zero Waste Summit
Each Team Member's description contains a responsibility, resources available section, and an area where the team members could be listed. Content Expert Research Marketing Business Planning Technology Engineering As their teacher/mentor, I also created a sheet for my responsibilities. Overall this framework helped allocate responsibility and build ownership within the program / class.
Later in the year, once my students became acquainted with the subject and familiar with the challenge, situation, or issue, we have a conversation and allocate roles accordingly.
Partnerships I viewed this as my opportunity to really get the kids excited, not only about the science of coral bleaching, ocean acidification, and biodiversity but to really look at how we could design something to address this issue, this "authentic" challenge.
Zack Rago, Chasing Coral star with one of my students at the National Geographic Summit
Often, as any new issue is in society, much is unknown. As I began to look at sustainability issues facing both the east coast and Central Florida I became aware of my lack of understanding. When I started the Coral Project (@PBDACoralProject) at Palm Beach Day Academy, I watched the film Chasing Coral on Netflix. I was blown away by the issue so close to my school that I honestly had been unaware of. As soon as the film was over and the credits rolled, I searched for the names of the stars of the documentary. I poured out in an email how I was taken by the piece and having grown up in central PA was unaware of many ocean-related issues. To my surprise, once again, my responses came immediately. I managed to establish contact with Zack Rago, the lead actor in the film and informed him about my intentions to focus on an educational strategy for addressing coral bleaching. As I wrote a grant for funding, I kept him abreast of the plans and what the students were learning. Additionally, to grow in my understanding I reached out to the Coral Restoration Foundation to seek resources and a partnership so that I could learn as my students did. This initiative aimed to minimize pollution caused by plastic coral trees being swept away during hurricane season and ending up in the ocean.
The process of acquiring knowledge and developing partnerships was essential. In all, I had reached out to over ten different experts in my pursuit of accurate and current information. All in all, we had an experienced inventor, the owner of Plastic Ocean, Island School, the Coral Restoration Foundation, the Reef Institute, and the Chasing Coral research team supporting our efforts in some way or another.
I highlight this topic because partnerships, collaborations, and communication are crucial to developing an authentic exploration of a problem. Consequently, I created templates to facilitate reaching out, not only to experts but also to colleagues.
Research Science content knowledge served as the foundation for sustainability projects. However, students often struggled with navigating research papers when introduced to new ideas. Furthermore, it became evident that my classes lacked adequate information literacy skills. To address this issue, I discovered the "Science Journal for Kids and Teens" website (QR code provided), which offered research papers rewritten specifically for a younger audience. This resource proved invaluable as it presented information in a condensed and easily digestible format.
Subsequently, I designed a template for students to practice citing sources and encouraged them to transform their newly acquired knowledge into social media posts to share with others. Reading Research to Share Citations Importance of Image / Caption / Hashtags
In addition to social media, I worked with filmmaking and presentations to address how to share their knowledge and give credit to resources. Film Template Scheduling Template
Social Media / Marketing Both the Coral Project and the WPS Harmful Algal Projects were designed on the pillars of Research, Awareness, and Action. For this reason, equal importance was placed on each of these areas and content understanding, Marketing, and Socials became important avenues for students to gain invaluable skills. Job markets cite skills such as collaboration, learning from failure, comfort with ambiguity, and socialemotional awareness as some of the top soughtafter skills in the job market. As we continued to build the program each of the listed skills were adressed. Areas that developed from this framework required the following research: Brand Identity Photography Public Speaking Communication Platforms School-wide engagement
Design After my students had gained a comprehensive understanding of the various elements involved in the issues, I motivated them to strive for solutions and to the area of applied research. Regarding the Coral Project, we focused on the design of a plastic-free coral tree constructed from bamboo. In the WPS Harmful Algal program, our aim was to develop a substrate capable of nurturing beneficial algae that could outcompete harmful algae.
Thus design and engineering became a culminating part of the program requiring analysis, trial and error, experimentaion and interdisciplary skill sets.
Design for the Coral Restoration foundation
Both projects emphasized the importance of analysis, mathematical skills, design, and building prototypes. Students who constructed the models collaborated with the marketing team to raise awareness through social media. Additionally, they worked alongside the research team responsible for developing the papers that we intended to share.
Design test, Palm Beach
"Engineering is not only about making things work; it's about making them work better." - Henry Petroski
PURPOSE We are working to develop an exceptional online resource platform that possesses extensions that serve educators' needs in the following areas: Mentorship Monthly Webinar 1 on 1 teacher chat Podcast Development of short 1 -3 min "how-to" videos/topics that matter Scaffolding / Information Literacy / Writing / Design Resource Connections Platforms 1. Website Lessons Websites Professionals 2. Social Media Professional Development Experiences Opportunities for Student Presentation
THANK YOU, AND WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU. V
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AUTHENTIC EXPLORATION MATTERS UN
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EDUCATOR AMBASSADORS
YOUR POWER
CROSS CURRICULAR PLANNING Letter template for peer cross curricular engagement
Dear [Name of Colleague], I hope you’ve been enjoying the school year thus far! I was happy to see the progress your students have been making in (art, technology, english language arts, math). They really enjoyed your ________ project. In my class, we are working on an environmental project that involves outreach and public awareness. [Add one sentence describing your project here.] As such, our activities have expanded beyond the realms of my subject area! I’m writing to ask if you would be willing to lend your expertise to the ________ part of our project as a consultant. I am very aware that as teachers, we are all extremely busy. Part of our project involves professional communication and interaction; therefore, one of my goals for students is that they learn how to consult experts respectfully and efficiently. If you are interested in assisting with our project, you can expect your time to be valued. Please respond by ______ if you are interested in further information/involvement in our project. Indicate the times and days that you would be able to participate, and in what capacity. Our class/session meetings are (days:) ______________(times:) ________________ Below is a list of days and times that you may be available to participate. If the times you are available do not correlate with our class meetings, we can still interact via email or other asynchronous means. I am available on the following days: Monday ___Tuesday ___Wednesday ___Thursday ___Friday ___ I am available at the following times: Mornings ___Lunchtime ___Afternoons ___After school ___Other or specific time: _______ I would prefer to participate:In person ___By video chat ___By email ___Other ___Thanks for your consideration! Thank you for your consideration. (Your name)
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