The American Meteorological Society (AMS), with support from NSF and in partnership with the State University of New York's College at Brockport, is developing highly trained K-12 teachers, known as Climate Education Resource Agents (CERAs), who are responsible for advancing public climate science literacy and affecting curriculum change within their local schools and districts. A total of 40 CERAs are selected from 5 regions of the United States that are especially vulnerable to climate change impacts and have high minority populations. These regions include New York City/Long Island, south Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska. CERAs are trained through the semester-long AMS DataStreme Earth's Climate System course and receive 3 graduate credits for course completion. Throughout the course, CERAs work in teams of two to develop a formal "Plan of Action" for local climate education outreach, which they then execute the following year. In order to have maximum community impact, CERAs foster relationships with regional climate centers and education programs. Each of the 5 regions select one of their CERA teams to represent their region's curriculum and public climate science literacy impacts and local partnerships at the January 2012 AMS Annual Meeting. The 40 CERAs trained through the proposed project will impact a minimum of 400 additional educators and 14,000 students within two years of their initial training.
The American Meteorological Society (AMS), with support from the NSF Geoscience Education program through Award #1034999 and in partnership with the State University of New York’s (SUNY) College at Brockport, trained 34 in-service K-12 teachers, known as Climate Education Resource Agents (CERAs), to advance public climate science literacy and affect curriculum change within their local schools and districts. This project experimented with innovative approaches to the national AMS DataStreme program, which trains more than 900 K-12 teachers per year in meteorology, oceanography, and climate science. AMS Climate Education Resource Agents were selected from 5 regions of the United States with climate change impact vulnerability and high minority populations: New York City/Long Island, south Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Alaska. Newly established course Local Implementation Teams (LITs) in these regions mentored CERAs through the semester-long AMS DataStreme Earth’s Climate System (ECS) course in spring semester 2011 (Figure 1). CERAs received 3 graduate credits for course completion through SUNY Brockport. Throughout the course, CERAs worked in teams of 2-3 to develop a formal "Plan of Action" for climate education outreach, which included formulating school-based and community-based workshops. All DataStreme participants write a Plan of Action, but for CERAs it was emphasized much earlier in the course and teachers were provided stipends to conduct peer-training workshops. During the 2011-12 school year, CERA teams and individuals conducted 19 peer-training workshops for 166 teachers and community members. About 74% of the workshops were school-based and 26% were community-based. CERAs rated participant enthusiasm and response very highly, and the participant evaluations closely corresponded with these ratings. The peer-training workshops increased the awareness and understanding of climate science and global climate change topics for nearly all participants, with at least ‘some’ of the information being new to them; 62% reported a high likelihood that they would share information gained with others and 72% rated CERA peer-training workshops as ‘better than’ other professional development activities. Participants also rated CERA topical understanding and presentation ability very highly, 94% rated the difficulty level of materials as 'about right' and 98% recommended the workshop they participated in be offered to others. Another unique approach to the NSF-funded offering was to invite all regional LIT leaders and one CERA team per region to the January 2012 AMS Annual Meeting. Participants reported on the course experience and outreach activities of the teachers in their region, providing valuable program feedback to AMS Education staff (Figure 2), and presented posters as part of the AMS Symposium on Education (Figure 3). Overall, 13 workshop participants rated the workshop ‘outstanding’, 5 ‘good’, 1 ‘okay but room for improvement', and none for ‘needs major improvement’. They enjoyed the collegial interactions and sharing of ideas, especially classroom activities, and appreciated not only being treated as professionals, but the recognition of their hard work. Interestingly, 74% of CERAs who attended the workshop conducted at least one peer-training workshop during the 2011-12 school year while only 50% of all CERAs followed through with the workshops. This suggests that AMS Annual Meeting participation strengthened CERA commitment. In summary, the intellectual merit of this project includes the dynamic, content-rich DataStreme ECS course, which provided a highly motivational learning experience for CERAs focused on current environment issues, climate, and climate change, and the leadership training provided through AMS staff and course LIT mentors. Lasting impacts of this project include the establishment of DataStreme LITs in areas especially vulnerable to climate change, and continued training of K-12 teachers there well beyond the spring 2011 semester. Survey results have consistently shown that a DataStreme trained teacher impacts, on average, 10 additional teachers and 350 additional students with what they have learned within two years of course completion. The 34 trained CERAs are expected to impact at least 340 additional teachers and 11,900 students by the end of the 2012-13 school year, with the numbers likely higher than the average due to the special approaches taken with this NSF-funded project.
