Washington, D.C.—Five educators who use environmental education to spur students’ enthusiasm to learn were named the 2010 National Outstanding Educators by Project Learning Tree®, the environmental education program of the American Forest Foundation. The five, selected from a record number of nominations from around the country, are Joy Cowart, a teacher at Lowndes County middle and high schools in Valdosta, GA; Susan Cox, Conservation Education Coordinator with the US Forest Service, based in Durham, NH; Reeda Hart, outreach specialist for the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics at Northern Kentucky University in Highland Heights, KY; Kurtis Koll, professor of physical science at Cameron University in Lawton, OK; and Debra Wagner, fourth-grade teacher at St. Paul Lutheran School in Lakeland, FL.
Since 1994, PLT’s Outstanding Educators have been selected for their commitment to environmental education, their exemplary use of PLT, and their exceptional teaching skills. The 2010 National Project Learning Tree Outstanding Educators will be honored at PLT’s 24th International Coordinators’ Conference in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, May 17–20, and are invited to attend the World Forestry Center’s International Educators Institute in Portland, Oregon, in July.
"The range of jobs of these educators shows the many ways that environmental education benefits adults and children,” said Kathy McGlauflin, Director of Project Learning Tree and Senior Vice President of Education at the American Forest Foundation. “At all grade levels, inside the classroom and outdoors, teaching kids directly or reaching them through training current or future teachers, these outstanding educators open up new ways to learn."
Information about the five 2010 Outstanding Educators is as follows:
Joy Cowart, Language Arts Teacher, Lowndes High School and Hahira Middle School, Valdosta, GA: Cowart uses PLT to teach language arts lessons, English as a second language classes, literature, and other courses at Lowndes High and Hahira Middle Schools, while at the same time increasing student awareness and knowledge of environmental issues. She also uses PLT activities as a Sunday school teacher, at summer camps, and in a Migrant Summer School curriculum. Now a PLT facilitator, Cowart has conducted more than 25 workshops for pre-service teachers at Valdosta State University. Through a GreenWorks! service-learning grant, she involved Hahira students in a landscaping project at a public library. An experienced teacher, Cowart became a National Board Certified teacher in 2008.
Susan Cox, Conservation Education Coordinator, US Forest Service, Durham, NH: Cox promotes learning about forests and the environment by forging partnerships between natural resource professionals and educators within her northeastern 20-state region. She incorporates PLT’s hands-on curriculum to provide them with teaching strategies and science content so they, in turn, can train teachers, youth program leaders, and students. She has a leading role in helping the US Forest Service carry out its education and outreach mission. In several states, she has helped design and deliver programs for teachers and other educators, including teacher forestry tours in Maine and watershed institutes in New York. She is past president of New Hampshire Environmental Educators, as well as an active participant in the NH Science Teacher Leaders Group. Cox began her career as a forester and says she migrated toward education to ensure the public understands basic scientific principles.
Reeda Hart, Science Outreach Specialist, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY: Hart has worked in the Center for Integrative Natural Science and Mathematics at Northern Kentucky University for the past seven years. In that position, she takes PLT into classrooms in six school systems, integrating the environment into academic lessons and modeling teaching practices for teachers. Over a three-year period in which Hart worked with six schools, the schools’ Academic Index scores rose significantly. An elementary school teacher for 27 years, she has created units on topics ranging from water to energy to life cycles, using PLT as a foundation to provide interactive content that supplements the teaching of core subjects, methods for elaboration, and assessment tools. She helped develop PLT’s new Early Childhood program on the national level; in addition, her university is now beginning an Early Childhood Alliance to provide PLT training to local preschool teachers.
Kurtis Koll, Ph.D., Professor of Physical Sciences, Cameron University, Lawton, OK: Koll created a series of environmental education short courses for pre-service science teachers that he opens to other students, too. Word has spread about his enthusiasm and creativity as a teacher, and the courses, which he teaches along with his regular course load of semester-long science classes, are popular across the campus. He takes students to state and national parks and wildlife management areas to investigate local environmental issues, and blends this experience with discussions about local, national, and global current events. Koll also trains teachers from local school districts to use PLT with their students. He uses PLT’s hands-on activities with scout groups, home-schoolers, and adults at public outreach events, and conducts “natural experience” programs with youth in the Comanche Nation Youth Program and the Wichita-Caddo Tribal Youth Program.
Debra Wagner, Fourth Grade Teacher, St. Paul Lutheran School, Lakeland, FL: For more than 28 years, Wagner has brought the environment into her classroom, and taken her students outdoors to learn. Her love of the land is contagious, and many of her projects (including an annual “Celebrate Creation” week) involve students throughout the entire PreK-eighth grade school, their parents, and the community. Through her efforts, St. Paul is a PLT-certified school, a Nationally Certified Schoolyard Habitat, and is now part of the national PLT
GreenSchools! program in which students investigate a wide range of environmental issues and design action projects to reduce their school’s environmental footprint. Wagner serves as a mentor to PLT workshop facilitators and participates in initiatives at the University of Florida to provide reading exercises and writing prompts for PLT activities to improve literacy.
Project Learning Tree® (PLT) is a program of the American Forest Foundation, a nonprofit conservation organization that works to ensure decision makers and educators, both today and tomorrow, understand and value the role that forests and the environment play in our lives. Through quality environmental education and outdoor learning for children and adults across the country, and in conjunction with our 50-state network of partners and volunteers, our programs are engaging youth and communities in conservation efforts, growing healthy forests, and conserving habitat. For more information, visit www.forestfoundation.org.
PLT provides environmental education training and PLT curriculum materials to 30,000 PreK-12 educators every year through 1,500 professional development workshops held in communities across the country. PLT teaches students "how to think, not what to think" about complex environmental issues, and helps students learn the skills they need to make sound choices about the environment. PLT’s GreenSchools! and GreenWorks! service-learning programs engage students with their community to apply their learning in a real-life context. For more information, visit www.plt.org.
