Wake County Teacher Uses N.C. Environmental Education Certification to Benefit School and Community

Bill Mulvey, a teacher at Athens Drive High School in Raleigh, recently completed his North Carolina Environmental Education Certification.

Bill collaborates with other Athens teachers in all departments on student projects and focuses on student-centered research. He has made a large impact on the school and community through his community partnership project which included creating an arboretum and adjoining outdoor classroom at the school. The community-based project is a requirement for environmental education certification.

When considering options for his project, Bill noticed that there were a lot of people using the high school from the community.  “The school is a traditional high school but also houses a public library, night classes and summer classes creating a very active community use situation,” Bill said. He saw this as an opportunity to educate people about the plants and landscape of the school while providing a place to teach students about native plants and their uses.

The community around Athens Drive High School is very diverse. During the school year, the building is bustling with 9th through 12th graders, people attending evening classes through Wake Technical Community College, and patrons of the public library.  During the summer Wake County Public Schools holds summer science programs, the community college has evening classes, and the public library continues to use the facility so locating the arboretum at the entrance to the school was a great opportunity to educate people about plants and their importance.

Placards were used to label the plants and include the common and scientific names and information about how the plants are used by both people and animals. An outdoor classroom area was also constructed for teaching in the arboretum and for use by Athens Drive and Wake Technical Community College teachers. The classroom area is adjacent to the walkway and provides a quiet place to learn and teach.

Bill’s enthusiasm for nature and the outdoors isn’t new. He discovered his love for the outdoors at an early age through his parents. “I learned to love the outdoors at an early age camping with my parents at Julian Price Park along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We often took weekends to camp, hike and canoe. My parents were both avid birders and my dad took me on canoe trips all through my teens. I credit my folks with my love of the outdoors and educating people about the need for preserving it,” he said.

Bill mentioned that there were many experiences during his time in the environmental education certification program that stood out. “There are so many that were so good it’s hard to pick one! I remember going for a mountain stream invertebrates class with Tanya Poole and electroshocking fish in the Davidson River as well as catching invertebrates from the substrate in the stream. It was such a fun and informative class in a great place,” he said.

Moving forward, Bill hopes to begin a new career in environmental education when he retires from teaching. He plans on using his environmental education certification to seek seasonal positions with the National Park Service and State Parks throughout the U.S. teaching environmental education related topics.

To read more about Bill go here.