The Educating for the Environment Team at RE Sources is a Washington State clock hour provider, proud to offer Fall and early Winter courses for all educators in Whatcom County. These workshops are designed to answer a local anchoring question, include hands-on activities, tips to implement, and assessment tools to support NGSS where appropriate.
In the following courses, teachers will be able to:
- Bring real-world local phenomena into their classrooms.
- Be exposed to different hands-on tools and activities that can be transferred to classroom use.
- Learn how to engage their students to take what they are learning and put it into action.
- Collaborate with colleagues.
2023-24 ClimeTime & other workshops for educators
Jump to workshops:
- Coho Conundrum
- Water & Watersheds
- Tracking Energy
- ClimeTime: Hope & Resilience
- ClimeTime: Teaching Outside
Coho Conundrum: Why are Coho Salmon dying?
4 STEM clock hours for attending, 1 for implementation.
This workshop is designed to help Middle and Upper Elementary educators looking to bring real-world issues into their classrooms. This workshop will focus on a local anchoring question: Why are Coho Salmon dying? Educators (playing the part of a student), will walk through multiple sequential transferable lessons with content relating to salmon lifecycle, water quality, and human impacts on the environment. Lessons incorporate hands-on experiments, data analysis, modeling, mapping and tips to implement. The workshop is designed to support 3-D NGSS performance expectations for the middle school grade band, though the material can be altered to reach upper elementary as well. Much of the course will be offered in an outdoor setting. Teachers are encouraged to implement the activities demonstrated (some materials supplied) and then share in narrative form how the experience went. This will earn an additional clock hour.
Who: Whatcom County Teachers grades 4 – 8
Date: Saturday, October 7, 2023
Time: 9:00 am – 1:00pm
Location: NSEA (Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association) Campus
Last day to register: Monday, October 2 at 5pm
Teachers receive: 4 STEM clock hours for attending, 1 for implementation.
Contact PriscillaB@re-sources.org for more info.
Water & Watersheds: Water 101
2 STEM clock hours for attending, 1 for implementation.
In this water 101 workshop, educators will learn activities that help students understand the complications of water — as a liquid, as a vapor, salt or fresh, and how precious it is. The course’s activities will support multiple NGSS, ELA and SEL standards. Teachers will be given tools to help their students move learning into action. Teachers are encouraged to implement the activities demonstrated (some materials supplied) and then share in narrative form how the experience went. This will earn an additional clock hour.
Who: Whatcom County Teachers grades K – 2
Date: Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Time: 3:15 – 5:15pm
Location: RE Sources (2309 Meridian St, Bellingham)
Last day to register: Tuesday, October 27 at 5pm
Teachers receive: 2 STEM clock hours for attending, 1 for implementation.
Contact ChelseaH@re-sources.org for more info.
Tracking Energy of Food Systems (two-part series)
3 STEM clock hours for attending.
This two part professional development series is designed to help educators understand food systems; growing, producing, processing, and disposing of food. Educators will help students draw connections to climate change and food justice issues. This series will focus on the question: What are we really throwing away when we throw away food? Educators (playing the part of a student), will walk through multiple sequential transferable lessons that incorporate creating and revising models, data collection and analysis, and designing solutions. This series is designed to support 3-D NGSS performance expectations for the 5th-grade band endpoint, though the altered material will be demonstrated to reach middle school. The lessons in this course are sequential and build off knowledge learned in previous lessons. Attendance for both days is requested.
Who: Whatcom County Teachers grades 4 – 8
Date: Tuesday, January 24 and Wednesday, January 25, 2024
Time: Both at 4:30 – 6:00pm
Locations: Jan. 24th in-person at RE Sources (2309 Meridian St, Bellingham); Jan. 25th via Zoom
Last day to register: Thursday, January 18 at 5pm
Teachers receive: 3 STEM clock hours
Contact ChelseaH@re-sources.org for more info.
ClimeTime Workshops
For the 2023-2024 school year, our ClimeTime offerings will consist of five in-person workshops offered throughout the year. Two workshops will build on our combined reputations for offering programs in schoolyard settings. And three will dig deeper into place-based phenomena building on our individual organizations’ strengths: watershed and salmon and the role of circular economies in Whatcom County.
ClimeTime: Hope & Resilience
Bring climate hope and resilience into the classroom!
3 STEM clock hours, 1 Equity hour, $100 stipend*
Calling all Whatcom County educators for grades 3 – 12 who want to connect real-world solutions to climate change!
Watersheds & Salmon
This field-based workshop will focus on equitable solutions currently being implemented in Whatcom County. The Teaching for the Climate Collaborative will guide participants through classroom-ready STEM activities that illustrate how climate change is affecting different stakeholders and ecosystems. Community members will share their expertise in developing solutions.
This workshop is designed to answer the following questions:
- What are the effects of climate change on salmon and our watershed?
- What are community members, tribes, CBOS, etc. doing about it in Whatcom County?
- What are the Indigenous Ways, currently and since time immemorial, to solve these issues?
- Who: Whatcom County Teachers grades 3-12
- When: Feb 10, 2024, 9:00am – 1:00pm
- Where: TBD
- Teachers receive: 3 STEM clock hours, 1 Equity hour, a $50 stipend, and a delicious lunch!
- Last Day to Register: Feb. 2, 2024
Circular Economies
One solution to the climate crisis is the development of circular economies, a system based on the reuse and regeneration of materials or products. This field-based workshop will focus on equitable solutions currently being implemented in Whatcom County. The Teaching for the Climate Collaborative will guide participants through classroom-ready STEM activities that illustrate how circular economies work. Multiple community members will share their expertise in developing solutions.
This workshop is designed to answer the following questions:
- What are the effects of climate change on Whatcom County?
- What are community members, tribes, CBOS, etc. doing about it?
- How does the investment in circular economies reduce climate impacts, specifically in Whatcom County?
- What are the Indigenous Ways, currently and since time immemorial, to solve these issues?
- Who: Whatcom County Teachers grades 3-12
- When: Feb 24, 2024, 9:00am – 1:00pm
- Where: TBD
- Teachers receive: 3 STEM clock hours, 1 Equity hour, a $50 stipend, and a delicious lunch!
- Last Day to Register: Feb. 16, 2024
Bring it to the Classroom
You’ve learned the material, now, how do you implement with your students? This 2-hour workshop will provide time and resources to assist you in lesson planning, as well as collaboration time to generate ideas about how to help students take action.
Objectives:
- Teachers will plan and prepare a lesson or unit that highlights local climate solutions.
- Teachers will collaborate to create a digital forum for sharing ideas about how to help students take action.
- Who: Participants in a Hope and Resilience workshop in Feb. 2024
- When: March 7, 2024, 4:30 – 6:30pm
- Where: TBD
- Teachers receive: 2 STEM clock hours, $25 stipend for attending and $25 upon implementation
- Last Day to Register: Wednesday, February 21, 2024 at 5pm
*Participants who attend one Hope and Resilience workshop, attend Bring it to the Classroom and implement a lesson receive $100.
ClimeTime: Teaching Outside
Teach for the climate by incorporating outdoor learning experiences!
2 STEM clock hours, receive a $50 stipend upon implementation of an outdoor lesson.
Calling all Whatcom County elementary teachers and staff serving grades K-5 looking to integrate the outdoors into everyday lessons. Our Teaching Outside workshops are designed to provide teachers and other education staff with the basic skills and tools to implement outdoor experiential and climate-related activities on school sites, in local parks, and in urban settings. Each workshop is stand-alone.
Teaching Outside (Session 1)
Objectives:
- Teachers will be able to evaluate the potential risks of teaching outdoors and plan appropriate measures to mitigate risks.
- Teachers will be able to summarize at least one teaching outside activity and one teaching outside strategy that may be used while teaching students.
- Teachers will be able to apply course learning by implementing and reflecting on a lesson delivered outside to their classroom students.
- Who: Whatcom County K-5 educators
- When: March 21, 2024, 4:30-6:30PM
- Where: TBD
- Last Day to Register: March 11, 2024 by 5:00PM
Teaching Outside (Session 2)
Objectives:
- Teachers will be able to evaluate the potential risks of teaching outdoors and plan appropriate measures to mitigate risks.
- Teachers will be able to summarize at least one teaching outside activity and one teaching outside strategy that may be used while teaching students.
- Teachers will be able to apply course learning by implementing and reflecting on a lesson delivered outside to their classroom students.
- Who: Whatcom County K-5 educators
- When: April 25, 2024, 4:30-6:30PM
- Where: Irene Reither Elementary School (954 E Hemmi Rd, Everson, WA 98247)
- Last Day to Register: April 15, 2024 by 5:00PM
Questions?
For Hope and Resilience sessions: Priscilla Brotherton Priscillab@re-sources.org
For Teaching Outside sessions: Nicola Follis Nicola@wildwhatcom.org
Funding for these workshops is provided by the Washington State Legislature through the ClimeTime proviso.
ClimeTime workshops from the Teaching for the Climate Cooperative Partners include:
Have an idea for teacher professional development?
Tell us about it! Schools@re-sources.org
