Thank you for taking the time to visit view our project.

We are in year 1 of 3 of our NOAA grant, which was truncated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We did complete most of our first year objectives, which include: a) design and delivery of our blended teacher professional learning, b) educator implementation of environmental hands-on inquiry lessons in their classrooms, c) students conducting outdoor field studies, and d) students designing their future stewardship action projects. Students were able to share their efforts and future plans at the Virginia State Capital, which they will continue and complete this fall.

We would be interested to hear your thoughts and learn more about:

• What are others doing that may be similar to designing and conducting a stewardship action project where they apply their learning toward a locally authentic community effort to improve their environment? How do you help students (and their teachers) design and implement an effort such as this?
• We have enjoyed collaborating across our university with both environmental research scientists and our education faculty in science education. Balancing the volume of content, pacing of delivery/support and grade-appropriateness is a negotiated and thoughtful conversation. Incorporating teachers’ voices (input from classroom practitioners) and graduate students provides richer input and ground truths our efforts. How do others blend these large teams from varied and unique perspectives?
• Our efforts take a school-wide approach looking at involving as many students as possible at each grade level (year one 6th grade, year two 7th grade, etc.) all working on a sustainable impact action project for the community across multiple years. What strategies and support do you see effective when working with larger numbers of students and teacher groups?
• Partnerships for sustaining efforts beyond the life of the grant is a common challenge-and opportunity. We outlined several “strategies” in our proposal. Understanding that you do not wait till the third year to embark upon these efforts, we welcome the communities thoughts in this regard.

Thank you for viewing our video. This is the first year of a three-year project focusing on environmental issues and stewardship related to the Chesapeake Bay. We are very pleased with the work that our students and teachers have accomplished and are looking forward to year two. However, our year one activities were abruptly interrupted by school closures. I am sure that some of you faced a similar situation. I would love to hear how you dealt with that interruption and how your planning for next year has been impacted. 

This video does an excellent job at capturing the essence of the Bivalves as Sustaining Ecosystems Treasures (BEST) project which prioritizes authentic experiences for students where they practice 21st century skills through deep inquiry of a locally relevant issue. Kudos to the team at VCU for all of their work on this project. 

This is great work - relates to our earlier NSF-funded development of EcoMOBILE

https://ecolearn.gse.harvard.edu/projects/ecomobile

This video captures the engaging and compelling nature of a local issue that matters to teachers and students. I think the professional learning with teacher and funding transportation to the field are key elements to increasing and promoting authentic and relevant science learning. The presentations at the Virginia state house give students an excellent opportunity to see the citizen science in action! For sustainablity,I wonder if the schools where Bivalves as sustaining ecosystems treasures project has been implemented would consider teaming up with other disciplines (ELA, Social Studies, Math, Art) to make this a yearly project based learning experience or a capstone project for one of the grades. Energy in ecosystems is a big focus with the MA STE curriculum frameworks (we adapted NGSS and created grade by grade standard for middle schools). How many days did you conduct the PD and were teacher stipended for their attendance and implementation of the project? Thanks I love this project for so many reasons!

Marianne- You bring up a wonderful component that we would like to do more with. We did two days of PD initially, we had coaching from our grad students when we were all in school, and we have a follow up day that we will conduct in June virtually. We are also paying a stipend. The teachers and students excitement is contagious. We look forward to the next two years and where we might go.

Marianne Dunne - Thanks for your comment. This was our first year, and with some considerable curveballs, but we are excited about how things are developing. WRT teaming up with other disciplines - one area of interest that emerged from our capitol visit during the 2020 session was to better link government and policy to conservation and ecosystem management (i.e., bring in more social studies to link with the STEM). As our students were touring the capitol,  legislators were considering legislation related to water quality protections. It would be great if we could better connect these issues in future years.

As an environmental educator, I am always excited to see projects that encourage teachers to engage students in authentic outdoor learning. Kudos! Because the environment is such a great context for learning, I am wondering how your team might expand this project to make it more interdisciplinary? In what ways could students explore the intersection between people and the environment relevant to their own community? How might this systems approach change student understanding of the environmental issue in their community and therefore their local watershed action project? 

Alison - thanks for your comment. I agree that there is a lot of potential to take a more multidisciplinary approach. For example, I am excited to explore in subsequent project years the link between the state government and natural resource conservation and management (see mention above) I think this could be a productive way to connect state government -> legislative process -> local communities -> student project. However, that said, we have to be careful to not overshoot the capacity of our teachers to deliver this content (given all else they must balance). 

Excellent video presentation - I applaud your collective efforts in providing this high-value educational experience for students and educators.  The final component, where students meet at the Capitol with their representatives to share their work, data, and findings is, as mentioned in the video, "priceless."

I love how your project integrates science experience with policy outreach--a truly interdisciplinary experience that can activate communication between and maong students with a range of interests.

Congratulations on taking the project and students to the VA State Capital-- a learning experience on all sides, I am sure. 

It is wonderful to see the integration of subjects along with teaching about the importance of government agencies and the science they both "do" and promote.

Thank you Al for sharing your project!  It looks like a very rich experience for both students and staff.  Good to see where you are these days.  Brian

What an exciting project — outdoors, authentic problems, science, and students going to visit their representatives, indeed priceless.  Two starting questions:  1.  It looks like you have a lot of educators and students involved. Can you give some indication of numbers of teachers and students involved so far?   (Also, very exciting about the funding you provide teachers, that's great.)

2.   I’d love to hear more about what teachers discussed during the professional learning sessions, can you share more about that?

Thank you.

Thank you for your query Judi.

I'll respond to the first part and ask Elizabeth Edmondson and Sue Kirk to chime in to the later part of your question. Two VCU life science graduate students, Jack Ryan and Casey Johnson might also share some feedback from the teachers too! They helped us deliver the teacher professional learning given their background knowledge in areas like oysters and mussel environmental research.

The first part of your question: The Request for Proposal for NOAA's B-WET grant requests a school-wide effort where every student might be part of a Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE).

As such in our planning with our partner school districts, i.e., Charles City County, Colonial Heights, New Kent and Newport News public schools, we coordinated a 3 year grant, where every student in the 6th grade would participate in the year 1 MWEE, every 7th grader in Year 2 (with follow-up support for Year 1 on-going), and Year 3 etc.

Based on the size of the middle school participating from each district, a team of teachers opted in to the effort. The numbers varied by the size of the middle school. In total there were approximately 13 teachers from 3 middle and one K-6 school, which in total will reach about 1,100 students each year. Colonial Heights and New Kent only have one middle school, Newport News has many (1 participating), and Charles City County Public Schools has a K-6 and 7-12 school system. 

Funding for teacher stipends, bus/travel funds for the field experience and $800 per school mini-grants to help them implement their efforts (purchase equipment, oyster/mussel tanks, water quality testing kits, etc.) are absolutely an essential ingredient.

Thanks for sharing this wonderful video! It's great to see kids taking on local science challenges and getting involved beyond the classroom. These teachers are putting in great efforts providing science experiences for their students and it is exciting to see you're focusing on strategies how teachers can offer such experiences past the grant.

With respect to strategies when working with large groups of teachers (and students), some teachers could be trained as "multipliers"; become experts and then lead a group of teachers at their school.

I'd be curious to learn more about which strategies teachers have to engage all of their students during the field activities!

Thank you!

Fantastic work! These kinds of hands on field study experiences for youth are priceless and pay in dividends. Keep up the great work team!

Fascinating project, and thanks so much for sharing it with us! I'd like to know a little more about how you support teachers in developing students skills related to communicating results: since a large part of the project is the students' trip to the capitol to discuss their findings and advocate for local concerns, how are students expected to build their presentations, display evidence, explain findings, etc? This part of the work is so often relegated to afterthought status, but it's clear that it's an important part of your project, so I'd love to know more! Thanks so much for this exciting presentation!

Science on the half shell, I love it.  It's a great concept to engage young students in local ecosystems they can relate to get them out of the classroom and into the natural world.  Very nice that they made presentations to state government representatives too.  It reinforces to them that they have a voice and that anyone can communicate with stake holders and decision makers.

Addressing Dr. Byers question about forging partnerships and sustaining this program, have you thought about expanding beyond bivalves?  Maybe fisheries.  I'm thinking about local, iconic shad populations.  Maybe there are opportunities to work with state fishery departments, perhaps Virginia Institute of Marine Science? 

Hi James,

Thanks for the feedback.  The James River sounds like a terrific resource and your team is clearly exploring multiple ecological topics to pursue there.  I wish you much continued success.

Dave - loved your Northwest Passage Project video. Left a comment for you there, if you have a moment. Is it possible VCU CES faculty member Linda Fernandez and one of our graduate students participated in your expedition?

Hi James,  Yes indeed, VCU was one of six minority serving institutions that participated in the Northwest Passage Project.  Linda Fernandez was the VCU faculty lead but did not join the expedition.  VCU undergrads Tristan Rivera, Mirella Sheban, and Erikca Shulze were participants on the Arctic trip. We plan to show the documentary and have a panel discussion at VCU at some future date.

This is an inspiring project! I love the authentic student involvement in the environment and community. In terms of your concern about sustainability of the project past the funding years, perhaps if you could get some elements of your project design embedded as fixtures of the related programs, for example, you mentioned some of the graduate students as helping support teacher training - is there a possibility that type of grad student-teacher interaction could be made a permanent piece of a graduate course or program? Perhaps a service learning component?

Great question Amanda. Thank you for asking. Indeed we have some other "sustainability" components or strategies to employ, AND I really like this idea! I appreciate you suggesting it. We did put funds aside in the grant for GA support, and we do have service learning course credit opportunities too! Let me let the other team members on the education or life science side contribute their thoughts.

Hi James! VCU's work here is commendable, and I was excited when I came to this video and realized it was efforts accomplished by one of our NPP partner institutions! To build off of Dave's input above, Tristan and Mirella also presented physical oceanography Northwest Passage Project data at the recent Ocean Sciences conference in San Diego, CA, and then Ericka presented microscopic communities results with on of her research teammates at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium earlier this year as well. It has been great to see the students continue to work with the scientists and data post-expedition and share their results and experiences through different platforms. Linda has been incredibly supportive of the students and our NPP team, and has offered fantastic insight throughout the project's duration.

A question about this watershed project, which is again, pretty fantastic and showcases a great example of how to integrate science and policy. I also really like the "stewardship action" concept. What happens with the students after they visit the Statehouse- is there an effort to maintain contact with students after they have completed the program?  Also, I completely recognize you are in year one of the project, but thoughts to scaling up and connecting with other groups studying bivalves etc. in other parallel environments (e.g. the west coast)?

Hi Holly - We look forward to your NPP show coming to VCU in the near future! It's been a great opportunity for our students. WRT our Bivalves project - we track the student cohort. So we should be seeing many of the same faces each year. The plan is to continue to build their understanding through project years with new materials and higher-order learning objectives. The teacher, on the other hand, turnover each year. So over the space of the grant, we'll work in-depth with 1 cohort of students but teachers across all middle school grades. I am sure the SOE partners can provide more detail.

Great work.  You mentioned teacher competence and confidence?  Are these outcome measures? What is the theoretical framework undergirding your work? What types of data are you collecting from teachers? students? from , lessons, field studies, infographics, meeting with representatives and local, student persepectives on working on real-world issues with impact?  

Great questions Michael. Thank you for asking!

Let me first preface my reply with a clarification, the NOAA B-WET grant is not a research-based grant, but one more focused on applied research practices, and closely structured to address a "Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience" which has specific components, drawn from a rich development history. See: https://www.noaa.gov/education/explainers/noaa-meaningful-watershed-educational-experience. There's many webinars, a comprehensive guidebook, and even an online self-directed course all geared toward supporting this implementation model that has the following components:

1. Issue Definition
2. Outdoor Field Activities
3. Stewardship Action Projects
4. Synthesis and conclusions

We do have a third-party evaluator, Dr. Greg Sherman from Radford University in Virginia that employs a robust logic model. At the potential of being "way too long a post response" here's an edited excerpt from from our eval section of the proposal. I hope this may help. Please feel free to email me directly and I'd be happy to share more insight, sample survey instruments used to capture teacher and student feedback, beyond artifacts, etc.

The overall evaluation strategies for this proposed project are based on a logic model approach, as defined by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Frechtling. Program outputs will be measured in different ways. Procedures for adapting OCB lessons will be provided during the summer workshops. These sessions will be evaluated using a Kirkpatrick Model approach measuring participant reactions, what they learned how to do as a result of the workshops, and how their practices changed as a result. These changes will be reflected in the OCB-adapted lessons they develop and implement. The program evaluator will obtain and review the lessons developed by all program participants, measuring the degree to which they align with program intentions. Formative data associated with workshop effectiveness will be provided to program designers for future improvements if necessary. Data will also be collected from the teachers related to successes and challenges associated with implementing the in-class lessons, field experiences, and stewardship action projects. In all cases, formative feedback will be solicited to inform subsequent iterations of the annual program.

Evaluation of program outcomes will focus on the use of survey instruments to measure teacher attitudes and changes in practice associated with designing and implementing the lessons and projects for the program. Teachers will also be asked to submit reports associated with student achievement aligned to all lesson and project instructional objectives. Student attitudes will be measured using survey administered on site at the end of each semester.

Thus as you can see, there is a mixed collection of data from observations, surveys, interviews, artifacts, being generated and used to demonstrate impact and guide future iterations of improvement. We are attempting to support the teachers' basic understanding of bivalves and their roles in sustaining our precious ecosystems along the James River, AND in providing a myriad of supports for implementing the student facing components of the MWEE,  beyond the initial workshop that include onsite school visits from our team, an online community platform, and even one-on-one support as desired. The teacher teams are really doing an awesome job in my humble opinion (as hopefully demonstrated in part from the video).

We are employing the K12 Framework for Science Education from the National Academies and incorporating a 5E (inquiry-based approach) that draws upon the recommended 8 practices in the NGSS, incorporating locally relevant, authentic storylines as students ask their own driving questions as they explore phenomena related to river ecosystem in their own district. AND as aligned to grade appropriate Virginia Standards of Learning and the Science Curriculum Framework (grades 6-8). Our blended PD model is drawn from research as well and standards such as those published by the Council of State Science Supervisors. See: http://cosss.org/Professional-Learning

Great project, well rounded and grounded in science practice.

A lot of this sounds great, but I don't think that it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards. 

A Framework for K-12 Science Education lays the foundation for the NGSS. Open the document and do a search of the following words: "environmental hands-on inquiry lessons," "outdoor field studies," or "stewardship action projects." None of the words are in the framework.

Go to page 262 of the framework. "Computer-based assessment offers a promising alternative. Simulations are being designed to measure not only deep conceptual understanding but also the science practices that are difficult to assess using paper-and-pencil tests or hands-on laboratory tasks." 

The word "outdoors" appears 0 times in the framework. The word "simulations" appears 42 times.

If you would like to understand what the NGSS portends, read about what is happening in Seattle. The NGSS lead to an education of kids doing simulations on computers, not doing investigations outdoors.

A lot of this sounds great, but I don't think that it aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards. 

A Framework for K-12 Science Education lays the foundation for the NGSS. Open the document and do a search of the following words: "environmental hands-on inquiry lessons," "outdoor field studies," or "stewardship action projects." None of the words are in the framework.

Go to page 262 of the framework. "Computer-based assessment offers a promising alternative. Simulations are being designed to measure not only deep conceptual understanding but also the science practices that are difficult to assess using paper-and-pencil tests or hands-on laboratory tasks." 

The word "outdoors" appears 0 times in the framework. The word "simulations" appears 42 times.

If you would like to understand what the NGSS portends, read about what is happening in Seattle. The NGSS lead to an education of kids doing simulations on computers, not doing investigations outdoors.

Congratulations to you Al and the entire MWEE team for this terrific project! You mentioned so many positive aspects of this work with the students including relevant phenomena, deeper conceptual understanding, students collecting authentic data, sparking student curiosity. I could not help but to think of this infographic from the National Academies report Science and Engineering for Grades 6-12 as you described how students were engaged in this relevant phenomenon and how recommendations from the report were evident in the students performances https://www.nap.edu/resource/25216/interactive/ Thank you for sharing this work with the field.  

Ken...It’s great to hear from you and thank you so much for the kind words!

Indeed I appreciate you sharing that graphic from the work that Brett Moulding, and others plus your contribution on the National Academies committee that led this insightful effort. Thank you for sharing the graphic and I highly recommend many download the free PDF of the report:https://www.nap.edu/download/25216