Educator Spotlight - Courtney Rousseau

Courtney Rousseau, an environmental educator at the Agape Center for Environmental Education in Fuquay-Varina recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification. Courtney leads educational programs and guided hikes that provide students with the opportunity to experience the natural world around them. She is also the president of the NC Purple Martin Society, a nonprofit organization focused on the conservation of the purple martin in North Carolina. Courtney enjoys educating others about nature and creating opportunities for people to connect to their local environment.

Courtney says her favorite thing about earning her certification was learning about new and creative ways to teach concepts to students in an engaging way. She also enjoyed visiting centers and learning about the different ecosystems in our state.

Courtney says the certification experience that stood out for her was the community partnership project. “The project gave me the opportunity to use a lot of different skills through research, teaching, collaboration, and communication. I also enjoyed enhancing and improving the natural habitat for the project and teaching the volunteers why these habitats are important.”

Nature Trail Before Courtney's Project 

For her community partnership project, Courtney restored an old nature trail at West Lake Elementary School in Apex. Her partners included the West Lake Elementary’s PTA and South Wake Conservationists. “The nature trail needed repair and updating, and with the assistance of both community groups, a plan for update was made and implemented over the course of several months and workdays. The nature trail now has a safe entryway bordered with native plants and 23 educational signs along the trail geared to students, to help spark their interest in learning more about the ecosystem. The purpose of the trail is to be an engaging teaching area for staff and students as well as an example of a piedmont ecosystem with native plants.”

Nature Trail after Courtney's Project

Courtney says the program changed her approach to teaching. “I aim to be inclusive of all students, consider their comfort in outdoor conditions and attempt to scale my teaching techniques to various ages of students. After participating in the certification program, I think about environmental issues on a student's level, as well as globally, and try to explain how our individual actions can affect those environmental issues.”

Educator Spotlight: Katie Zimmerman

Katie Zimmerman, the Assistant Park Manager of Programming and Administration with Lake Johnson Park, recently completed the NC Environmental Education Certification. Katie says the certification program helped her find a job. 

“My passion is connecting the community to their environment, so my favorite part of my job is coordinating programs, teaching when I can, and helping visitors create an experience at our park to meet their needs. On my own time, I love camping, finding new trails to explore, and searching creeks and streams for critters with my daughter Sawyer. Otherwise, you can find me climbing the crags, snuggling with my two cats, reading, or crocheting!

Katie says her favorite part of the certification process was learning and expanding her knowledge. “Before I was working on my certification, I already enjoyed visiting nature centers and taking professional development classes, so I appreciated that I could keep doing that and earn credit towards something that could help me in my career.”

When asked about an experience in the program that stood out for her, she said it was the community partnership project. “The community project was a unique part of the experience. My project allowed me to connect with my neighborhood in a way I wouldn't have otherwise.” 

For her partnership project, Katie worked with her neighborhood's HOA to turn one of the neighborhood’s most popular trails into a nature trail. “The HOA was immediately interested - apparently it was something they'd already been thinking about doing, especially since there is a large white ash tree on the trail that has been protected from the emerald ash borer, and the HOA wanted our residents to be able to find the tree more easily. I walked the trail with one of the park committee members, and we worked together to identify additional features of the trail that we thought our community would appreciate. It created a way to engage our neighborhood in learning about their environment, the opportunity to work together and to find members of our community who are also passionate about our trails.”

Katie says the certification program changed her approach to teaching. “Through the program, I learned more about teaching through discovery. This has influenced how I teach other topics as well. Rather than simply sharing the information, I focus on asking questions, making connections, and guiding others to make conclusions for themselves.”

Katie says the program also changed the way she thinks about environmental issues. “A big thing I learned about environmental issues through this program is how everything is connected. Not just in the ecological sense, such as human impact on one species affecting the entire ecosystem. The connections are "cross-curricular." Environmental issues span into math and literature, as well as into local government, social justice, human rights, and national policy.”