East Brainerd Elementary School teachers and 25 other area educators are using the summer break to bring an environmental focus back to their classrooms next year by attending an educational workshop organized by the Chattanooga Nature Center in Sapelo Island, Ga.
CNC board member and Ivy Academy teacher Jim Watson said the program, now in its third year, strives first and foremost to help teachers assume an environmental focus while teaching state and county standards.
Hamilton County teachers Katie Hawkins and Melissa Meyer, of Brown Middle School, Terry Hooper, of Birchwood Elementary School, Glenda Roy, of East Brainerd Elementary School, and Teresa Calbaugh, of Soddy Elementary School, from left, emerge from a salt marsh at Sapelo Island, Ga., where they participated in an environmental education workshop.“If (students) have a basic understanding of environmental values, they’re going to be a responsible person,” Watson said.
Fourth-grade teacher and technology coach Jody Conn was among the three EBES faculty members to participate in the workshop. This is his second year to attend. First-grade teacher Amy Brown and second-grade teacher Glenda Roy also attended.
“As a 21st century educator I feel it is my responsibility to ingrain a sense of environmental stewardship on my students,” Conn said. “There is only one Earth for us to sustain and recent events in the Gulf of Mexico underscore that fact. They’ve got sea birds dying, sea turtles dying. All that is happening. What better thing to bring back to the classroom, to the kids, than how this is going to affect every body, not just those down on the coast?”