Introducing The State of EE

So I've been hinting at a big project that I've been working on and I am pleased to announce that it is finally ready to be released for your listening pleasure! I've been busy working on a new podcast series, The State of EE, which will feature some of the cool environmental education that is happening across the nation. There is so many great environmental education things going on and this is a chance for me to highlight some of the cool things that I've found. Each episode will consist of a few segments highlighting things such as a nature center, residential nature center, a state park, and much much more. There is a lot to explore so the best way is to dive right in!

Still working on a bit more original cover...

The first episode features Delaware and is already posted for your listening pleasure. I will be making a post about this specific episode soon which will include timestamps, sources and some extra cool bonuses that I may have stumbled upon. These state posts will also be sporadically updated with other opportunities and information that I find regarding that particular state. It's going to be a blast and hopefully turn into a great future resource as well!

The eventual goal is to get the series up on iTunes though it will take me some time to figure out RSS. Any tips on that would be really appreciated! For now the series will continue to be posted on Soundcloud until a solution appears. Also, bear with me as I figure out how podcasting works. I am still figuring out the best setup and format so I expect that there will be a bit of variance in the first few episodes as I sort that out. The good news is that I am planning on getting a better microphone soon which I am really excited about!

If you or your nature center would like to be highlighted in an upcoming episode, let me know. So far Twitter and comments below are the best ways to let me know. I'm always looking for ideas or help so contact me and we can work something out.

Episode 1-Delaware: https://soundcloud.com/eenatureguy/the-state-of-ee-delaware

The hero you've been looking for...

"I hear everything. You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior but every day I hear people crying for one." -Superman

I deserve a medal. I have undertaking a treacherous journey for you readers so you will not have to suffer the same hardships I have had to. In that spirit, I have volunteered myself as tribute to wade through the murky land of: 

Yep, Pinterest...

Actually, I haven't had too much trouble with Pinterest so far, especially when compared to trying to find crafts from other sources. That being said, there are a lot of crafts that are out of that just don't work at a nature center. Whether the craft is too expensive to make on a large-scale or too complicated to do with young learners, it can be really difficult to find good ideas to use in programs. Therefore, I have decided to create a Pinterest page for the greater good to help create a resource to help find affordable, doable crafts for naturalists such as myself. It is a tough, possibly thankless job, but I will take it upon myself to carry the yoke for young naturalists everywhere.

As an added bonus, if you have a request for a craft, I will find it for you. I will take requests for the boards I should pin to such as age-based or specific animals. It's really up to you guys what direction this board takes. I will do my best to update my page as often as I can, as well as add new categories. So friend me up on Pinterest and hopefully I can be some help!

My Pinterest Page: Here

QH: New Year's Resolution

"Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." -Abraham Lincoln 

As we start off 2015 I want to challenge each and every one of you to make a New Year's Resolution that will help you become a better naturalist. Whether it is a goal to improve an aspect of your teaching, become an expert in a topic, or just get outside more during the winter time I believe that it's important to set the bar early. Too often it can be easy to fall into a rut that is created by following the same routine day in and day out. By making a New Year's Resolution, you can use it to serve as motivation to push past the norm. Make the goal achievable and set smaller goals that will help you reach your goal. Stick with it and you be surprised by the results when the end of the year comes around.

One of the best ways to follow through with a goal is to tell someone what your resolution is so they can be supportive and help keep you accountable. Let me know what your New Year's Resolution is going to either in the comment section below or on Twitter. I will do my best to help keep you on track!

2014: My Year In Review

 "Celebrate what you want to see more of." -Tom Peters

2014 has come to a close and it is the perfect time to reflect on how the past year went. Personally, I had a year that challenged me to step outside of my comfort zone to become a better naturalist. Here are some of the things I did in 2014 in regards to EE:

 -Completed an unpaid internship at an area nature center
 -Graduated from college to earn my B.S.
 -Got First Aid and CPR certified
 -Spent the summer working as a naturalist at the nature center I interned at
 -Worked as a naturalist at a residential ELC

 -Took classes towards my Graduate Certificate in Environmental Education

 -Attended a state naturalist conference
 -Started this blog

I would like to think that I had a pretty successful year. At the very least, it certainly kept me busy! From what I've learned during my adventures of 2014 is that gaining practical experience is key. Make it a priority going into the New Year to try new things and to put yourself in situations that are going to allow you to grow both personally and professionally. Don't be afraid to network and make those important personal connections with fellow naturalists. Who knows, those connections could come in handy and help you land the position you are looking for down the road!

In all, 2014 was one heck of a year. I am really proud of all that I have accomplished so far and I am even more excited what's left to come (including some awesome ideas for this blog!). I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and I look forward to the adventures that are to be had in 2015!

The Best,
eeNatureGuy

QH: The Clock Evaluation

Pretty much everyone hates being evaluated. The evaluator sits in the back of the classroom with the classroom with a clipboard and furiously scribbles away, giving a heart-wrenching feeling to whatever educator stands in the front. We've all been at the receiving end of a scrutinizing evaluation and wondered, is the way we've been evaluated the most productive?

For a peer evaluation project I recently did, I did my best to take the negative aspects out of my evaluation by presenting it in a fun, useful way. As I took my notes, I tracked the amount of time that the educator spent on each activity. Then, to present my evaluation, I drew up a series of clocks that tracked each type of activity through a color code system. This method was both fun for me to create as well as being a helpful for the educator. We were both able to visually see how the class was broken up, leading to some meaningful discussions on time management and transitioning. Had I just given the teacher a series of number or letter grades, I could have shut down the teacher and any chance of reflection. While this method should by no means be the only way to evaluate, I hope it allows people a chance to think outside the box when it comes to evaluating. I've attached the template to blog so anyone could have a chance to try out this method. Enjoy!

Word & PDF: Clock Evaluation Template

Note: If the link is not working please let me know!

Introducing Quick Hits

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” -Saul Bellow

Sometime inspiration hits during the strangest of times. I was struggling to sleep last night and as I mulled around the Internet I read an article about how sometimes the best blog posts are ones that take the least time to write. After a decent bit of rest, I woke up and thought, why not make a new post series based around that idea. So an idea was born: Quick Hits.

The concept is simple: I write a blog post in 10 minutes and give myself 5 minutes to edit (so it isn't total crap) and we'll go from there. For the start, as I develop a readership, I'm planning on picking a topic that interest me. As I go on though, I want to start taking ideas that you, the reader, choose. It can come from a Tweet on my Twitter account (@eenatureguy) or from a comment on a blog. If this is able to take off, I might make a strawpoll on the side of the blog and make this a routine occurrence. Whatever happens, I'm really excited to challenge myself and I have a feeling that this could be the start of a really fun way to blog. So give me ideas of what to write about, you guys are the ones in the driver seat for this one!

The Many Facets of Environmental Centers

"In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it is unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature"-Mollie Beattie

There is much more to running a nature center then what meets the eye. The longer I have been and the more time I've spend behind the scenes, the more I've realized that the education component of a center is just one of  many cogs of the machine. This really struck home with me while working on a larger center for a summer where of the full-time positions, 80% of them involved working in something other than teaching. It really takes more than just a teaching component to run a successful nature center, it also takes business, technology, and communication savvy to make things happen.

Diagram of the how each component of a nature center works together

Education
Taking graduate level classes in Environmental Education has helped me to realize that there is so much more to education than stringing together a series of activities related to each other. There is an art as theories and learning models blend together to make a lasting impression on learner of all ages. The best environmental educator are more storytellers or director than a teacher, directing students along a unseen plot in a way that the learning isn't just heard but experienced. That being said, most centers juggle around part-time instructors which during the busy months can be a whirl of scheduling. Of any of the facets of environmental education this component ends up being the the most memorable part of the center but in reality is only one part of it.

Science/Technology
While environmental education has begun to move away from teaching solely science to a more holistic approach, I personally feel that EE centers still have an obligation to science at their core. One great way that centers across world can aid science is by promoting citizen science projects. Some programs, such as the Christmas Bird Counts, can be national projects while other such as local watershed monitoring projects, involve collecting data on a local scale. In many cases, even taking good stewardship of the nature center's land itself teaches scientific knowledge. An aspect which I feel has a tendency to get pushed to the side a bit is technology. Newer technology can sometimes be hard for many centers to adopt as it is expensive and always seems to be changing. Needless to say, technology may be tool nature centers have in connecting students to nature.

Communication
The rise of the age of social media has added a layer of complexity to the communication. Gone are the days where print media ruled. Now, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest have been adopted by many nature centers as they've realized social media is a powerful tool to reach their intended audience. Using social media has allowed for nature centers to reach members where they are as smartphones give the Internet at people's fingertips. While there has been the adoption of online communication, those more traditional forms such as email, newspaper advertisements and even snail mail are still extremely important lines of communication. The key is to keep communications current to fit the attention span of the current culture.

Business/Nonprofit Leadership/Administrative
This side of running a nature center is the one that I am least familiar with this one is arguable the most important. There is a lot that goes into administering a nature center, from talking to donors to grant writing to scheduling events, etc. Add onto that the legal and accounting side running the center and it's enough to make my head spin...

As you can see, the fun part of being of starting off in the EE field is that there are options of what areas you can focus on. While education may be the focus of the center, without the other facets no nature center would be able to run successfully. For this post I decided to stick to shorter descriptions of each. If there's interest, I would be more than willing to post a more in-depth analysis of each.

What part of facet of running a nature center are you most interested in? Let me know in the comments below or on tweet your answer to me @eeNatureGuy!

Motivation

 "In the end we will conserve only what we love; we will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught"-Babe Dioum 

Now that I have some housekeeping posts out of the way, I am excited to get started on the purpose of this blog. For my first "real" post I would like to focus on something that is important in my opinion for the new professional naturalist to get an understanding of: motivation. My hope for this post is that it will give us an opportunity to get to know each other a bit better as well as provide an initial stepping stone concept to cover we begin our exploration of environmental education. 

Dictionary.com defines motivation as providing a reason to act in a certain way. There can be many reasons to get into environmental education and it can really vary from person to person. I want to first tell you about my motivation to get into environmental education. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was sitting in lecture on my first day of Wildlife Management class as a freshman when the professor told the class something I will never forget: “Wildlife management is just as much the management of people as it is the management of wildlife.” I had an inkling from that point that education would be somewhere in my future but I could never have guessed how drastically it would shape my life. After trying my hand at a lot of different areas of the wildlife management field, I came to the conclusion that for me, environmental education was where I belonged. There is no better opportunity to reach out to individuals and connect with them in a way to instill the same love of nature that I have. At least I haven't found one yet!

One of the fallacies that I can see new professionals falling into is the thought that EE might be an easy field to get into. I have struggled for many a night with the thoughts of the future and how I can get my foot in the door for meaningful employment. If I wanted to get that full-time opportunity right out of college I probably would have been better off trying to be a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. I'm not saying isn’t possible but the prospects of getting a well-paying job right off the bat is very slim. When the most of the places of employment are non-profit and funded by grants and donations, it can be difficult to find for them to offer competitive wages. Is it possible to land the full-time gig? Sure. Is it likely? No. So to start off, it seems like an endless road of internships, volunteering, and seasonal work. This is the unfortunate situation the EE field has worked its way into and in my opinion it's the young naturalists that suffer. And unfortunately I don't foresee this trend ending any time soon...

That being said, EE is indeed a rewarding field if you are looking for more than just economic reward. Going into EE has given me the best opportunity to reach a wide audience that I can teach to about what I really care about: nature. It has given me an outlet to share my fascination of the outdoors while having an office that is more often outside than inside. It has given me the opportunity to meet countless number of amazing individuals have spent their lives living what I hope to teach to to the future generation. There really is no better way to build an environmentally conscience society then instilling a love for the land in the heart of a child.

Whatever your motivation is for getting into environmental education, embrace it. Without a purpose to dedicate to this field is daunting to break into. Keep on fighting the good fight and let me know what motivates you in the comments below :)

Welcome Aboard!

I've been contemplating starting a blog for quite some time now. It's always been something I've wanted to do in the back of my mind and I'm quite surprised that it's taken until now for me to get started. Now that I've gotten this far, I think the only thing left for me to do is to jump wholeheartedly into this endeavor.

I consider myself budding naturalist seeing that I've just graduated with an undergrad degree. As a relatively green newcomer to the field myself, I feel though I have a fresh perspective towards environmental education. What I'm looking to do is to compile a resource for newer professional naturalists to help get them them off their feet. From reviewing EE activities to awesome internships I'm looking to turn this blog into a all-around resource for those looking to work in the EE field.

In order to accomplish this, I'm going to need input from you, the readers. Please feel free to leave me a comment to let me know what you are looking for or to have a discussion with your advice. I envision this blog turning into a resource that I myself could have sorely used as I started out on my journey to working in the EE field. Until then my plan is to put together a variety of post types until I find a format that sticks.

So with that, welcome to this grand adventure. Let's lace up our boots together and go get a little bit muddy.