Pivot!  Like many of you, this spring the Environmental Educators of North Carolina (EENC) pivoted all our professional development and networking opportunities to a virtual format.This includes EENC’s core workshops on the Guidelines for Excellence. These workshops qualify for the NC Environmental Educator Certificate, managed by our partners at the NC Office of Environmental Education and Public Affairs.  With so many educators in our state working on their EE certificates, getting these workshops up and running was a high priority. 

Starting with resources provided by Bora Simmons with the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), EENC created the first virtual Guidelines for Excellence workshop in the nation in June of this year.  

Focusing on the K-12 Environmental Education Guidelines, this workshop is for educators (formal, nonformal, and higher education) who want to learn more about what environmental literacy is and how to explain the value of environmental literacy, what environmental literacy should look like by the end of grades 4, 8 and 12, and how to connect these Guidelines to your EE instructional materials and NC curriculum standards.  After piloting the activities in Google Classroom in June, EENC created a course that is offered as a combination of independent work offered through the learning platform Moodle and two live group Zoom calls.

Our 6th workshop on the K-12 EE Guidelines is planned for October, and we’re planning more to come.  With the successes and lessons learned so far, we’ve been able to develop a template that is being shared to other NAAEE affiliates and Guidelines trainers across the nation.  Plus, we’re in the process of developing a second online workshop option, focused on the Professional Development Guidelines, that will be ready later this year.

Want to connect about what EENC did and learn more about offering online k-12 EE Guidelines for Excellence workshops in your own state?  Contact Lauren Pyle at director@eenc.org for more information.