Mecklenburg County Educator Cassie Skrutowski Completes Her N.C. Environmental Education Certification

Cassie Skrutowski, an educator at Reedy Creek Nature Center in Charlotte and at Anne Springs Close Greenway in Fort Mill, recently completed the NC Environmental Education Certification.

Cassie develops and teaches environmental education programs to school groups on field trips and provides programs to the public. She works with all age groups but her main audience is elementary-aged students. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, kayaking and nature art.

Cassie says the instructional workshops were her favorite part of the program because of the curriculum guides she received. “The guidebooks have many environmental activities in them that are extremely useful for educators. These workshops were always well put together and allowed us to explore ways we could teach the activities for varying age groups and locations. Playful Pedagogy was a workshop that stood out to me because the activities were all about letting children play and learn through play, which was such an interesting concept for me to learn about.”

For her community partnership project, Cassie created lesson plans for local preschools based on age-appropriate books about animals. She also brought nature center animals for the students to touch and learn about including hermit crabs, starfish and a yellow-bellied slider. The preschools will be able to use the lesson plans in the future and hopefully continue to incorporate environmental content into their learning.

Cassie says the certification changed her approach to teaching in several ways. “I learned about the NC school standards and how lesson plans should be in accordance with those standards for field trips. I also learned that as an environmental educator, my focus during teaching should be to give all the facts, and let my students draw their own conclusions. We, as educators, should not "force" our opinions on anyone, or try to lead them to conclusions that we personally believe are correct. I try my best now to be unbiased while teaching, and to provide all sides of any issue I speak about.”

Through the program, Cassie says she also changed her view of environmental issues. “I learned about many new environmental issues that I was not knowledgeable on prior to the workshops I took. I try to think more proactively about environmental issues, and what I can do at home and work to help.”

Maya Revell, A Wake Forest University Graduate Student Completes Her Environmental Education Certification

Maya Revell is a graduate student in the Master of Arts in Sustainability program at Wake Forest University. Through this interdisciplinary program, she is exploring the intersections of education, environment, and equity. Maya is also a Fellow with the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a private foundation with a mission of improving the quality of live for North Carolina residents.

Maya says her favorite part of earning the Environmental Education Certification was making connections with the environmental education community across the state while learning about how to be an effective educator. “Of all the amazing experiences I had, the certification experience that stands out to me is my teaching experience with the Haw River Assembly during their annual Learning Celebration. This celebration took place over a span of three weeks, and I had the opportunity to empower young students and provide them with tools to protect their local waterways. Also, this was my first experience teaching with the Stormwater SMART Program through the Piedmont Triad Regional Council which makes it even more memorable!”

For her community partnership project, Maya organized the first Bio Blitz at Cates Farm Park with the City of Mebane, NC for Alamance County Creek Week. Maya’s project had a positive impact on the community. “Community residents were able to come to the park and engage with community entities such as NC Wildlife Resources Commission, Elon University and Haw River Assembly. During the event, families got to participate in citizen science activities, learn how to identify macroinvertebrates, and take inventory of the native plants and animals along Mill Creek in Alamance County. After the event, we were able to upload the species that were identified so that others could view their findings.”

Maya says the certification program provided her with strategies to engage younger learners in an effective way.  “As someone who had worked more in educating 8th graders and peers in college, I did not have much experience in how to effectively teach students in grades K-5. The certification program showed me the importance of play-based learning for children.”

While Maya doesn’t think the program changed the way she thinks about environmental issues, she says it has shown her the value that education has in guiding others to make sustainable choices for the environment. “Because of the systemic and interconnected nature of many societal problems, this certification program has aided me in developing curriculum and teaching about the environment in a way that demonstrates this interconnectedness to students.”

NC State University Science Education PhD Student, Emma Refvem Completes Her N.C. Environmental Education Certification

Emma Refvem a graduate student, working toward a PhD in Science Education at NC State University completed the state’s Environmental Education Certification program this week. Emma is a research assistant for Dr. Gail Jones and is researching how family science experiences influence career choice and why people are motivated to choose science teaching as a career.

Before pursuing her graduate degree, Emma worked for eight years at Riverside High School in Durham as an Earth/Environmental Science teacher and spent a summer serving as the naturalist at the Eno River State Park. She currently serves on the Teacher Advisory Committee for the NC Energy Literacy Fellows. “My teaching passions include incorporating technology into science lessons, organizing large groups of people with spreadsheets, and capitalizing on the joy and genius of high school students.”

One experience that stands out for Emma during her certification was a Box Turtle class at Medoc Mountain State Park in which she found and marked box turtles around the park. “I had never been given an opportunity to participate in that kind of field science and especially didn't feel confident I would know how to find a turtle. But I found one! It was a lot of fun to work on that team throughout the morning.”

For her community partnership project, Emma worked with the National Honor Society students at Riverside High School to develop and plan a service event for their club this spring. They decided to plant a pollinator garden on the area of Riverside that is used by the Occupational Course of Study (OCS) program, a course of study for students with disabilities who intend to go directly into employment upon graduating high school, for their fall and spring plant sales. “I applied for a grant through Monarch Watch and received a flat of milkweed plants for our garden. COVID-19 interrupted our initial plans for a large plant day, but a small garden with a donated insect hotel was still able to be planted. The honor students were able to gain service hours and learn how to plan a garden and the OCS students will be able to observe the monarch butterflies that come to their new habitat.”

Emma says that as a formal educator, she was very uncomfortable with informal science education at first. She didn't know what to do with non-captive willing adults who just wanted to learn for the sake of learning but instead was more familiar working within a curriculum and learning to spark excitement and wonder in all types of students. “I have since learned to see how to capitalize on the willingness of the people who come to informal settings to learn, and have seen the importance on creating amazing spaces for families and people of all ages to enjoy and learn from nature. It helped my formal education to remember that figuring out how to incorporate outdoor learning and activities that capitalize on our local environment can only help these students by getting them excited and engaged.”

Emma says she has developed a deeper understanding of how to approach different types of learners, which helps her to think about the best ways to communicate to people about the importance of protecting our environment. “Figuring out how to approach and overcome barriers that different people may have to certain areas of environmental science (like climate science, for example) has helped me to think more critically about environmental education initiatives, and now that I am in the role of a researcher, it helps me analyze research on how people approach environmental education more critically.”

Wilkes County Educator Kayla Mounce Completes Her N.C. Environmental Education Certification

Kayla Mounce recently completed her Environmental Education Certification. Kayla is a Natural Resource Conservationist at Wilkes Soil and Water Conservation District. She works with the education program and writes conservation plans for farms that receive state cost-share funds. She also teaches a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Course at Appalachian State University and loves to hike in her free time.

Kaya says that the Growing Up WILD workshop at Grandfather Mountain was her favorite environmental education experience. “My mom is a Pre-K teacher, so I have had fun implementing some of those lessons with her class, even during the time of online learning due to COVID-19.” Kayla enjoyed the instructional workshops and receiving curriculum guides that she could use as resources for teaching.

For her community partnership project, Kayla was able to coordinate a regional invitation land judging competition for high school FFA (Future Farmers of America) teams. Kayla was very active in FFA in high school and land judging had a positive impact on her career, so she wanted to make an impact in her community by hosting the event. She says that the number of events was declining because of the challenging content and soil science it entails. “Because of the decrease in participation in recent years, there was not a regional competition before my project. I wanted to give students exposure to how the contest worked before competing at the state event. I was glad to see this event bring out new teams and I hope to make it an annual event. It even led to conversation and planning for an advisor training.”

Kayla says that the certification program has helped her in several ways. “I am definitely more aware of teaching methods and ways to address student questions and lead group discussions. I also write grants for my organization so learning how to write objectives in the Methods of Teaching Environmental Education workshop has been extremely helpful. I like to teach in a way that allows students to come to their own conclusions and I have learned a lot more about the importance of particular wildlife, such as salamanders.”