Padilla Bay
Padilla Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve provides middle and high school teacher professional development workshops around climate science, ocean acidification, and data literacy.
The workshops were developed in collaboration with UC Berkeley-Lawrence Hall of Science and are based on a 12 week pre-service teacher course called Advancing Climate Literacy through investment in In-Service and Pre-Service Science Educators (ACLIPSE). It complements the middle school curriculum in the GEMS series, Ocean Sciences Sequence.
Teachers gain a clear understanding of the connections between CO2 emissions and global effects like warming climate, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. The workshops include hands-on experiments that demonstrate carbon moving through living systems, model-building to connect cause and effect, and data activities that make use of student-generated data as well as local weather data and global online data. The workshop includes a student activity that focuses on solutions at various levels from individual choices to international efforts. There is ample time for reflecting on learning and implementation planning.
Teacher Professional Learning
All activities are explicitly connected to NGSS practices and concepts. We periodically reflect on activities and call out the NGSS connections. We include metacognition, reflecting on the pedagogy behind activities as they relate to research on how people learn.
This curriculum has an inclusive PD aspect. A Swinomish collaborator shares how traditional cultural knowledge complements scientific knowledge as the tribal community addresses environmental problems. A local curriculum called Thirteen Moons, connects environmental issues to annual seasons and traditional uses of plants and animals. Ocean scientist, Dr. Jude Apple and Eelgrass Ecologist, Dr. Sylvia Yang at Padilla are co-facilitators.
Teacher Workshop Sessions
A variety of workshop formats will be offered this year, including multi-day on-site, multi-day hybrid, and single-session virtual workshops. Sign up for our mailing list to learn about upcoming workshops.
Partners & Collaborators
UC Berkeley-Lawrence Hall of Science
Success Stories from Padilla Bay
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...
IslandWood Teacher Professional Development Workshop in Tukwila
On September 28th, 16 teachers and educators gathered at Cascade View Elementary School in Tukwila to participate in IslandWood's "NGSS in Action: Science in the Schoolyard" workshop. Together, they dove into discussions of "three dimensional" science learning, and...
Carbonated Water: Teaching Climate Science, Ocean Acidification, and Data Literacy
This two-day workshop (March 1-2, 2019) for middle and high school teachers focused on connecting the causes and effects of climate change and ocean acidification. Students used local and regional online data to gain data skills, argue with evidence, and make...