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CONSERVATION EDUCATION: RESOURCES FOR K-12 EDUCATORS AND GUEST SPEAKERS

Most people in the world receive the vast majority of their formal education during their early years. Although the exact labels and ages may vary from country to country, the central educational setting for most people is what is referred to in the United States and many countries as K-12: kindergarten through twelfth grade, or primary and secondary education. SCB's Education Committee intends to devote some effort over the next few years to improving the resources available concerning conservation biology for K-12 teachers and for conservation professionals who interact with students in the K-12 environment. As always, we plan to use SCB's Web site as a platform for making such information available.

The first resource in this K-12 initiative is development of helpful suggestions for conservation professionals who are asked to give presentations about their work to students in a K-12 classroom. Some members of SCB have extensive experience working in the K-12 environment; for the rest of us, however, talking to children in an educational setting is potentially intimidating.

The needs, interests, and abilities of children are different than those of the adults with whom we may be accustomed to interacting, and therefore the challenges of contributing effectively to a K-12 classroom and the conservation education of our youngest citizens are great. I know that after one or two unpleasant experiences as guests in a K-12 classroom, many of us have sworn never to attempt it again, preferring to stay with a tried-and-true audience that can easily absorb the nuances of ANOVAs, ArcInfo, and PowerPoint.

But despite how clichéd it may sound, children really are the future. As a professional society dedicated to achieving a goal that will require a radical transformation in how all people live, ignoring children in their formative years ought not to be viewed as an option. Despite the challenges, we must be willing to participate in their education.

In an effort to reduce the intimidation level, the SCB Education Committee asked Candace Lutzow-Felling of the University of Hawai'i to prepare a list of suggested "dos" and don'ts" for giving guest presentations in the K-12 setting. Lutzow-Felling has presented workshops on this issue at national meetings for other professional societies, and we are lucky to have someone with such expertise among our ranks.

The list can be downloaded from the SCB Education Web site, www.conbio.net/
SCB/EducationTeaching_EN.asp. We recognize that the list currently reflects a United States bias in terms of both language (English) and cultural assumptions. We plan to translate the list into languages other than English and to adapt the list to reflect additional educational cultures. If you are able to translate the document or revise it to accommodate other cultural traditions, please let me know.

I would like to explain how this document was developed because it reflects use of a new protocol for communicating with SCB members. As you are aware, the information profile for each SCB member includes an option for indicating whether you would like to be contacted about a wide range of SCB activities, including education. Any member can adjust their profile online at any time, but most people are likely to make adjustments just once each year during membership renewal. When the Education Committee decided to pursue this "dos and don'ts" project, we sent an email request for a volunteer to write the list and volunteers to review it on completion. The request was distributed to the 350 members whose profiles indicated their interest in receiving such requests. From the numerous responses that the mailing generated, we selected one exceptionally qualified person to write the list; 26 members from seven countries volunteered as reviewers. Thus, the final list represents the best of SCB grassroots participation. I plan for us to use the same strategy to develop many other resources in the future.

As noted above, this is only the first K-12 resource in what we hope will become a rich suite of offerings. However, the SCB Education Committee is currently limited in its ability to know what resources would be most useful for teachers in the K-12 setting. (All current members of the Education Committee primarily are active in undergraduate, graduate, or adult public education.) Therefore, we are very interested in hearing from those of you with experience in the K-12 setting about priorities for what SCB could produce or provide. Clearly, SCB is not positioned to do everything that is suggested, but we hope to bring as many suggestions to life as we can. If you have an idea, please let me know (trombulak@middlebury.edu).

Steve Trombulak
Chair, Education Committee

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