Kalysha Clark

I spent the last day and a half at Haw River State Park participating in a workshop called Methods of Teaching EE, a requirement for individuals who are working to obtain their North Carolina Environmental Education (EE) certification.

I learned a lot in a day and a half, particularly surrounding the practice of teaching, which is something I don't have much experience with.

We discussed learning styles and the importance of considering learning styles other than your own when planning for and teaching a lesson. We also learned about many different types of teaching methods, including story-telling, games, discovery/exploratory learning, moral dilemmas, discussion and many more.

I also got to learn about how to align your programs with education standards and how to write lessons that have solid objectives.

Additionally, we also talked about designing lessons around age groups.

My group designed a lesson about bugs for 12 year olds to adults.

Our lesson plan was to start with a discussion about bug life cycles and introduce the audience to the body parts of bugs. We would then go out and explore outside, seeing if we could find bugs in various stages of the life cycle. Any specimens we caught could be placed on the laminated sheets in the appropriate block for that life cycle stage. We also had magnifying lenses that could be used to inspect what we found.

We chose wheat from the crackers.

We also participated in a lesson that had us trace back an ingredient in our food all the way to its start and consider what kind of processes it went through to get to us. We had to think about all the impacts that this had on wildlife. The purpose of this event, however, was to emphasize diversity training. One group had pepperoni assigned to them, but how would someone feel if they were in that group and only ate Kosher? Our group had cheese and crackers. How would someone feel if they were in our group and were vegan?

Overall, I really enjoyed the workshop and I got a lot to take home and think about for the next time I am planning lessons and teaching a group of people!