Jennie Emmons, a high school teacher from Durham County recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification.

Jennie has been a teacher for 12 years and next month she will be taking a position as an environmental specialist with the NC Department of Environmental Quality. “I love to learn, and I am always trying to learn something new. I am passionate about natural history, and I love to hike and identify every plant along the way. I also love to travel, I have lived in Puerto Rico and recently  traveled to Canada, Belize and Rome, Italy.”

Jennie says her favorite part of earning her certification is attending the Environmental Educators of North Carolina’s conference. When asked what certification experience stood out for her, she says it was a trip with her students. “Taking my students on hiking trips to the Eno River and having them dip net in our retention pond at the school for macroinvertebrates. I loved seeing them experience those things for the first time.”

For her community partnership project, Jennie worked with 5th grade students at Excelsior Classical Academy to write a Keep NC Beautiful Window of Opportunity Grant for a pollinator garden. The students were involved with all aspects of the project. “This project helped 5th graders learn more about pollinators and their needs and it also got them out of their comfort zone. They did research, planned engaging lessons, and presented those lessons to students of varying ages. Not only did students share this commitment and passion among their peers, but they also shared it with other grade levels and other adults. It carries on even today as I chat with them in the hallways about the work we did for this grant and how we can do other things to inspire our school community to value and care for our environment.” Jennie says the lesson about pollinators reached around 400 students from ages five to 10 years old. 

Jennie says the program changed her approach to teaching. “Students gain more by getting their hands on what they are learning, and it helps them build better connections to what they are studying. I also learned that it is ok to just let kids sit still in nature. Even high schoolers.”

Educator Spotlight: Chelsie Bobbitt

Chelsie Bobbitt recently completed her North Carolina Environmental Education Certification. Chelsie is the administrator and education coordinator for Alleghany Soil and Water Conservation District. She has an associate degree in animal science and is currently a senior at NC A&T Greensboro working on her bachelor’s degree in agriculture professional services. Chelsie grew up on a beef cattle farm in the mountains of North Carolina and she shows beef cattle at the local and state level. In her personal time, she loves being outside on the farm and playing with her sweet puppy Benji.

Chelsie says her favorite part of earning her certification was exploring new places in North Carolina. “I enjoyed meeting new people that have the same goals as I do and making new friends that I can call and ask for advice.”

For her community partnership project, Chelsie created a community garden with grant support from AppHealthCare. While teaching at local schools, Chelsie realized that many of the students did not know where their food comes from. “This really opened my eyes because I live in a small farming town and I grew up on a cattle farm, so it is natural for me to know where food comes from, but many students had no idea. I came back to my office and did some digging on this problem and realized it was a bigger issue than I thought. I did some research to figure out what I could do to fix this issue, and this is how I came up with the community garden.”

Chelsie started her project by teaching students at three elementary schools about the life cycle of plants, what plants need to survive and how to grow food. She says when the community heard about the project, people started donating supplies. “I had several classes with 4-H kids in the garden and families would stop by and pick veggies, and whatever was left over, I would take it to the local food closet. I chose to put the garden in the middle of town next to the park because the park is a very popular place during the summer and if families are at the park, they can just walk right over to the garden without having to drive.”

In terms of her approach to teaching, Chelsie says the program helped her realize how important hands-on lessons can be when teaching. She says the program also changed the way she thinks about environmental issues. “I never studied environmental issues before this program and now I think about them all the time. I look for ways I can help the environment by teaching others about local environmental issues.”  

DEQ Secretary Recognizes Liani Yirka, Education Program Coordinator at Sarah P. Duke Gardens

NC Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Elizabeth Biser visited Sarah P. Duke Gardens in Durham to award Liani Yirka with her North Carolina Environmental Education Certificate. 

Yirka is the education program coordinator for the gardens and in that role, she coordinates and provides outdoor nonformal environmental education programs and engagement opportunities for learners of all ages and abilities.  

Yirka is passionate about educational opportunities that are inclusive, comfortable, and welcoming to all abilities, languages, socio-economic status, and identities. She creates educational programs using universal design principles with this goal in mind. 

Secretary Biser and staff from the DEQ Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs enjoyed a tour of the native plant garden that overlooks a piedmont prairie habitat, a space that Liani often uses for teaching programs. They were also joined by Liani’s supervisor Kavanah Anderson, director of learning at the gardens.

Liani notes that at first, many visitors do not realize the significance of the biodiversity found in the native plant garden and prairie habitat because it doesn’t look like a traditional landscaped garden. For that reason, the space provides an opportunity to educate both children and adults about native plant populations and the indigenous people who care for them. 

Liani said that her favorite part of earning her certification was learning from, and with, other educators. “I deeply respect and admire others who have dedicated their career to advancing this field and to supporting both learners and other educators as they learn about the natural world. It has also been a real treat to visit environmental education centers across the state,” she says. She also notes how much she enjoyed learning from the playful pedagogy workshops offered through the NC Zoo. “Linda Kinney is a treasure to the NC Environmental Education community, and I have enjoyed embracing the child in me and learning with this perspective,” says Yirka.

Liani says the program changed her approach to teaching. “I now have the skills and joys of creating programs that are student-led, observation based, where I do not need to know all the facts because we can explore "what does it remind you of," and "what do you notice?" as a way of reaching and learning together. I have gained these skills and techniques through my participation in the environmental education certification program,” she says. 

In addition to many hours of professional development, the certification program requires a community partnership project. For her project, Liani collaborated with the Durham School of the Arts to provide monthly art-and-science connection programs for Occupational Course of Study students with Autism. “Each month students would connect to the natural world they encounter during other visits to Duke Gardens through an art project that increases their fine motor skills, listening and comprehension skills, ability to follow precise direction, and create artwork that they can showcase both at Duke Gardens during a public festival, and at school. The capstone of this 5-month project was a short video/photo montage shared with the Durham School of the Arts community that showcases the students’ projects at Duke Gardens, including a culminating mural that will be displayed in the Duke Gardens classroom for years to come,” says Yirka. 

“Liani is an example of the type of outstanding educator that we are fortunate to have in North Carolina. I’m honored to recognize her work in the field to make environmental education more inclusive for all North Carolinians,” says Secretary Biser.” 

Yirka plans to continue to advocate and work towards an environmental education community of practice that embraces intersectional identities and supports marginalized communities. I want environmental education to be inclusive to BIPOC communities, embrace environmental justice issues, and teach and learn with identities that are not the dominant narrative. I see so much progress on this front in our field and will continue to incorporate this into my own practice.”

Educator Spotlight - Chelsea (Cea) Flowers

Chelsea (Cea) Flowers recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification. For the last four years, Cea has worked as a core field instructor/naturalist for Muddy Sneakers, a non-profit organization that partners with public schools to deliver high quality, hands-on outdoor science lessons that correspond to state standards. “It was an amazing experience to see students light up as they explored outdoors all while making connections to what they were learning in the classroom.”

In the summers, during the off-season, Cea wears a variety of hats. She taught an undergraduate class in public history, designed, and led a summer camp for a local non-profit community farm and worked on her own flora and fauna inspired pottery. She is currently seeking a new environmental education position, particularly in programming and advocacy.

When asked about her favorite part of earning her certification, Cea says she can’t pick just one, but the Project Learning Tree Southern Forest and Climate Change workshop facilitated by Renee Strnad, with NCSU Extension Forestry is at the top of her list. “It had been a while since I'd done a carbon sequestration exercise! That was a big favorite since it's just this immensely important geological action that I think every single person should have the opportunity to learn more about! It's kind of a big deal and fascinating.”

Cea says she enjoyed every one of the hands-on workshops she attended. “I really appreciated the ones that explored the intersections of class, race, and gender within our environmental history so, for example, the Equity and the Environment workshop stood out. I also really loved workshops that focused on pedagogy and methodology like Methods of Teaching Environmental Education. The organization I was working with had a very diverse group of students, with varying levels of comfort in the outdoors, so that workshop was very useful. One thing that held true from every single workshop, whether it was Aquatic Wild, bat monitoring, or a methodologies class was how much community connection can be built. You’re meeting so many people with all these different backgrounds and dreams. You’re learning from other attendees about what’s happening across the state-programs, resources, educational centers, and projects. By engaging with this community, I’ve gathered a lot of inspiration and made some wonderful personal and professional relationships. Also, being following by an elk at dusk while attending the Advanced Air Quality – Ground Level Ozone workshop in the mountains was a highlight!”

For her community partnership project, Cea installed two pollinator gardens in the coastal plains, one on the grounds of the Robeson County Public Library in Lumberton where she is originally from, to encourage more interaction with the outdoors, and the other at a rural elementary school in Chadbourn where the staff is enthusiastic about connecting students to nature. “I chose to do my project in this area because while beautiful and marked by unique topography and its rich diversity of plants, many of the communities here do not have access to resources available to other areas like the Triangle. I wanted to give these spaces the attention they deserve.”

Cea says the program helped her to gain confidence in her knowledge of natural resources and ecological systems. “My degrees were in humanities, with an MA in public history. And although I supplemented that with some elective college classes in environmental history and science, and then sought a variety of workshops and internships relating to ecology and ethnobotany, I don’t have a hard science degree…yet! But joining the certificate program kept me immersed and committed to continuing that education and gave me a lot more confidence passing on knowledge and curiosity to others. But as importantly, it gave me teaching strategies so that I could adapt my approaches to different learning styles and interests within the unique challenges that can come from outdoor education. I’ve also learned so many effective and fun activities that can be used spontaneously on a walk or over several days. I use quite a few with my friends and their kids and one day for my own.” 

Cea says the program also changed the way she looks at environmental issues. “I believe some of the workshops I took reaffirmed the importance of recognizing how systemic issues affect individual capacity for environmental interaction” so she tries to encourage the students she works with to be stewards of the environment.