ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION

14 June 2002
HEB Central Market
Houston, Texas

Ann Hamilton introduced a panel of speakers on environmental education (EE), including Glenn Miller from the Nature Heritage Society discussing local initiatives, Jim Lester from the University of Houston dealing with state issues, and Leib Kominsky describing national programs.

Glenn Miller explained that the Nature Heritage Society was formed in 1992 to provide a nature science curriculum for students and professional training for teachers in Houston’s inner city. The Society works in 17 Houston Independent School District schools, 53 community centers, 4 multi-purpose nature centers in Houston, and through site visits to Sam Houston National Forest, Herman Brown Park, and Hunting and Sims Bayous. NHS seeks to give children and their teachers environmental literacy through informal and formal training to help meet TEKS standards, to enhance life skills in teamwork, self-confidence and initiative, to give job skills and career ideas, to develop outdoor skills, and to build appreciation and support for conservation. For more information, Mr. Miller can be reached at 713-520-8016 or natureheritagesociety@hotmail.com

Jim Lester began by noting the wide variety of groups active in environmental education in Texas, including:

• the Texas Environmental Education Partnership (the hub of the other groups that follow),

• Texas Environmental Education Advisory Committee (an advisor to the Commissioner of Education on incorporating EE into K-12 curriculum),

• the Texas Environmental Awareness Network (a group of state agency staff involved in EE),

• the Texas Association for Environmental Education (an organization of EE teachers, administrators, college and university faculty),

• Informal Science Education Association (a network of museums, zoos, state parks, aquariums, nature science centers),

• Texas Outdoor Educators Association (camp directors, scout leaders, parks outreach managers and teachers), and

• the Texas Environmental Education Partnership Fund Board (established by the Legislature in 1999 to raise funds for EE programs).

Dr. Lester explained that there were short-term and long-term challenges to the Texas Environmental Education Partnership (TEEP), the group that he’s been most closely associated with. Over the short term he is most concerned by groups led by the Texas chapter of Citizens for a Sound Economy. CSE has been fighting environmental education and environmental science as political advocacy, and was successful in 2001 in persuading the State Board of Education to discard all but 1 science textbook on the grounds of its supposed anti-free market, anti-patriotic content. To offset the CSE critique, TEEP plans to become more involved in the textbook review during the next cycle.

Over the long term, Dr. Lester felt that we need to have an environmentally literate citizenry to get to a sustainable society: there is not enough money for "pollution police" to force environmental behavior. To teach this environmental literacy, he felt that we needed no new curriculum, but rather more teacher training to use the curriculum and other resources that are already available. He noted that teachers get only 20-24 hours of science coursework while in college, and have just a 3-4 year window in their early career before their attitudes and beliefs about teaching become set. Dr. Lester added that some of the EE message might be better instilled in church than in school, where there is more latitude and freedom. Along those lines, he was proud of the work done by Terri Morgan and the Christian Life Commission of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

Leib Kominsky of the Student Conservation Association explained that the SCA is a national group based in Virginia that provides hands-on work experiences in the country’s national parks, forests, and grasslands. It was founded 45 years ago as an experiment based on a Vassar student’s thesis that the nation’s parks needed volunteer student help and appreciation.

The SCA has two basic programs: one focused on high school students ranging from 15 ½ to 18 years old that provides 5-week sessions of camping in public lands and maintaining trails, planting trees, removing invasive plants and restoring groundcover, and a second for adults from 18 to 79 years old that gives unpaid internships and job training opportunities with National Parks Service staff. The SCA also offers two smaller programs: one political experience that offers 3 months in Washington at the Capitol, and 3 months in the parks, to see the policy/execution connection, and a second program that reaches out to underserved urban communities in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.. Several programs are offered in Texas - radiotracking prairie chickens at the Attwater Prairie Chicken NWR, censusing and studying birds at the Balcones Canyonlands NWR, surveying and mapping wildlife at Fort Sam Houston and Camp Bulls, and enrolling in Lake LBJ’s Outdoor School, to teach environmental themes in grades 5 through 8.

Mr. Kominsky felt that their programs give education in land features, use and management, training in life skills of cooperation, leadership, and initiative, and guidance in career development. Their $15 million annual budget is supported by partnerships with government (2/3), and gifts from foundations, corporations and individuals (1/3).

Max Woodfin noted that SCA is a national partner of Earth Share.

Questions and Answers

Q: Glenn Miller was asked what the typical age and ethnicity was for students participating in Nature Heritage Society programs. He said that they range from K through 12, but also included some who went on to college at A&M and Prairie View. Their ethnic makeup is 12% Caucasian, 53% Hispanic, and 28% African American.

Q: Jim Lester was asked how foundations could make an impact on environmental education policy. There was concern, for example, that the Legislature had passed but not funded the EE mandate in Texas. Dr. Lester proposed that new funding sources for EE mandates be enacted, such as from TNRCC pollution fines, since the school districts in Houston, Dallas and other communities rely exclusively on outside sources (NSF and TNRCC, for example) for field trip funding. He also thought foundations might help improve teacher training through programs such as Project Wild, Project Wet, and the Learning Tree, and through more incentives to raise teacher participation in continuing nature science education (many teachers just satisfy their 145 hours of credits through in-service, disciplinary training classes).

Q: One funder felt that the 4H program in Palacios was a successful EE model. Glenn Miller liked the "Say Yes" program. Jim Lester recommended the 4H program, "Food, Land, and People". Colleen Claybourn thought highly of the EE program at the Texas State Marine Center in Palacios, where students learned traditional 3Rs skills in a natural setting (grading shells by size teaches math, describing plants and birds teaches writing, seining for fish teaches biology, and making fish prints is a lesson in art).

Q: One donor said that there needed to be more affection for the natural world, and that environmental education might be the route. She was concerned about the changing demographics of the state, in that Hispanics and African Americans made up a larger portion of Texas’ population, but often hadn’t had the chance to be exposed to the outdoors and conservation concerns.

Jim Lester and Glenn Miller agreed that there was more demand than available resources in the EE field. They gave the example of the new $8 million Sheldon Lake State Park and Environmental Center that was already over-subscribed, like many other overtaxed nature centers.

Mr. Miller reiterated the need for better education about the environment, and compassion for wildlife with a story: in the midst of 1300 kids enjoying a fishing event, one child watched a duck approach and then killed it with a rock, without any obvious reason nor any comment from his father.