Volume I, Issue 2 | December 2024

Notes from TERC

  • We wish the joy of the season to you and yours!
  • Applications for the 2025 Summer Institute are now open! Do you have colleagues who might benefit from the experience? Stay tuned to the Google Group for more details.
  • If you haven’t already, please send us a note about presentations, articles, or other things you’ve done as a result of your Climate and Equity fellowship. • Send news, suggestions of good resources, and other topics you’d like to share with your colleagues in the next newsletter by Jan 10th,  2025!

Share this newsletter with colleagues, students, and friends — and tell us how it could be more useful for you!

Updates from Climate and Equity Fellows

Recreating the Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem -Carl Armstrong (’22)

Since 2001, students at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, Illinois have worked in their nearby community to recreate the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. This space, now totaling roughly a dozen acres, is not only their land lab, but also provides services to the community & wildlife, and serves as an example of what’s possible. The story of the space is as unique as the acreage itself, spanning two generations of teachers, thousands of students, and a litany of lessons learned along the way. Now a quarter century old, the land has matured to the point where students can collect seed for next year’s plants from the prairie itself and grow those seeds in the school’s greenhouse. Read about how students learn to pet the bumblebees and more when the full article is published in the Fall 2025 edition of Kaleidoscope.

Work with Subject to Climate NY and the Climate Resilience and Education Task Force – Kelli Grabowski (’23)

I have been working with Subject to Climate NY to build the Climate Education Hub: https://nyclimateeducation.org/ that was just released this summer and with the Climate Resilience and Education Task Force (CRETF) to get climate change put into all PK-16 NY education – we currently have a bill going to legislation and an appropriation request sitting on the governor’s desk. The appropriation would put two new staff members in the NYS education department: one for aligning and integrating climate topics into all subject areas at every grade level and providing professional learning opportunities for educators across the state, the other staff member would be in charge of helping schools manage facilities – whether building new structures to be more sustainable and climate resilient, or modify existing structures and systems.

Cut Bank School District STEM Trunk Curriculum Program -Bess Hjartarson (’24)

What are the STEM Trunks:

The trunks are boxes that teachers throughout our district can check out and use in their classrooms.  They vary in STEM topics (see list below) and include a lesson binder with NGSS aligned lessons for grades K-12, as well as hands on materials and manipulatives that teachers can use in their classrooms with their students.  While most are actual trunks (plastic totes), some are not; for example the Snowshoeing “Trunk” includes a lesson binder and access to the CBHS Class Set of snowshoes (41 pairs). 

Trunk #1: Bison Ecology in the K-12 Classroom

Trunk #2: Snowshoeing for the Outdoor Classroom

Trunk #3: Recycling in our Community

Trunk #4: Clean Energy & Climate in the K-12 Classroom

Trunk #5: Montana Native Prairie Plant Garden

Purpose of the STEM Trunks:

The purpose of the STEM Trunks is to provide a simple, local, place-based, culturally responsive resource to support all of our district teachers in their STEM teaching. 

Now’s your chance! Deadline for next newsletter

Send us your ideas, your news items, or resource reviews by Jan 10th, 2025 for the next newsletter.

Call-backs: Feel free to suggest topics for future call back sessions

Contact Brian at climateandequity@terc.edu with ideas and proposals!

The Climate and Equity project is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.