Educators learned why we had such an extreme heat wave this past summer, as they heard from Robin Fox, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane. Chelsea Freeman teaches high school in Tonasket, an agricultural community hit especially hard by the...
Partner stories
These stories are a collection of educator professional learning experiences and opportunities provided by ESD, CBO and Tribal School partners.

NEWESD 101
Northeast Washington ESD 101 focused on creating a way to reach all 288 schools in their region with standards that fit their scope and sequence while expanding teachers understanding of climate science. This resulted in larger professional development for regions and individualized professional development for some schools.
Regional Science Coordinators are growing and supporting OpenSciEd use amongst middle school science teachers
Between 2018 and 2021, Washington State Regional Science Coordinators and a tea of dedicated middle school science teachers engaged in field testing OpenSciEd instructional units to help inform the development of a complete Grades 6-8 open educational resource (OER)....
Washington State High School Teachers and OpenSciEd: on the cutting edge of NGSS instruction and materials
Following our state's three year participation in helping develop the nationally recognized Middle School OpenSciEd materials, Washington State high school science teachers are stepping up to aid development of OpenSciEd's open educational resource instructional...
ClimeTime cited in leading science journal
The Washington state program ClimeTime, which is facilitated by the state’s nine Education Service Districts (ESDs) and community partners, was recently cited as a popular and effective model for educator education in climate science. The Journal of Science Policy and...
Connecting Agriculture and Climate Change in Eastern Washington
Professional learning forms community and educators made connections in more ways than one at the recent Washington Green Schools’ STEM Seminar: Agriculture and Climate Change, which was held over three afternoon sessions in October and November. Twenty-six educators...
Using NGSS to Investigate STEM Systems
High School teachers from Eastern Washington started the new year off with a bang! On January 5th teachers came to learn about the systems and the “Invisible Forest”. The evening started with Anne Thompson. Anne is a Research Assistant Professor in the Biology...
New Tools Engage Students in Virtual Climate Science Learning
Adults usually try to reduce kids’ screen time, but when COVID-19 closed schools to in-person learning last spring, schools had no choice but to move classes online. With little experience in remote instruction, teachers have been challenged to get kids actively...
Climate Champions Game in Production
Production has started for the Climate Champions, a game that was built in partnership by NEWESD and Filament Games for the State of Washington. Each ESD will receive enough games for every district in their region as well as professional development on game based...
Empowering students to learn through hands-on problem solving — using a video game!
Working with Washington State to Increase Climate Literacy In partnership with NEWESD, Tyto Online developed a new Weather & Climate Module that includes Climate Change, focused on NGSS 6-8 standards, with an initial pilot showing a statistically significant 7%...