Two Summer 2018 Institutes for Teacher Grades 4 to 8

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Water & Watersheds
Sustainability
Edward Hessler

In another century (1981), Leonard Charles, Jim Doyle, Lynn Milliman, and Victoria Stockley wrote a famous quiz published in Covevolution Quarterly (32:1): Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz.

Bioregions generally are large but all encompass two terrains, one of geography and the other of consciousness. In short, they are places that are naturally-bounded which means that the idea is flexible. It all depends on your purpose. Their idea is to help us protect, maintain and restore local environments.  So I add a question to the bioregional quiz. It is for extra-credit. What watershed do you live in?  

We live in watersheds but most of us don't think about these natural divisions of the surface of the planet and their implications for their stewardship. Many years ago John Wesley Powell did and his ideas seem much less restricted to a particular US geography and also seem to be even more relevant now.

On August 26, 2003, National Public Radio's Howard Berkes reported on the vision of John Wesley Powell. Berkes noted that "In 1878, Powell published his Report on the Lands of the Arid Region..... Powell wanted to organize settlements around water and watersheds, which would force water users to conserve the scarce resource, because overuse or pollution would hurt everyone in the watershed."

Minnesota has 80 major watersheds defined by rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands. you can easily find which one you live in here.

Fourth to eighth grade teachers can attend a Center for Global Environmental Education institute in the context of a watershed. There are two this summer and both are free.

St. Croix River Institute, June 25-27, 2018. 

Mississippi River Institute, July 23-25, 2018.



For complete information about the 2018 Rivers Institutes featuring Waters to the Sea click here. 

As A.A. Milne wrote in Winnie-the-Pooh, When you see someone putting on his Big Boots, you can be pretty sure that an Adventure is going to happen.