This project provides for the continued development of a national cadre of precollege teachers competent in ocean and coastal environmental science content and appropriate pedagogy who serve as Ocean Education Resource Teachers and leaders in their local areas and home states. In recognition of the vital role of teachers in promoting environmental literacy, the American Meteorological Society (AMS) proposes the ongoing offering and continual development of its in-service precollege teacher enhancement course entitled DataStreme Ocean (see https://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/ds-ocean/home.html). The semester-long, three-credit hour graduate course will be offered at up to 25 sites nationally via three-member Local Implementation Teams (LITs). About 75 specially trained precollege teachers, college/university professors, and scientists serve on LITs. Project institutional partners include NOAA and the State University of New York at Brockport. DataStreme Ocean is partially delivered online and focuses on investigations of the ocean and coastal environment emphasizing the use of the most current NOAA data available on the Internet. Offered fall and spring semesters, 400 teachers will be trained during the 2005-06 school year. As part of their training, participants develop Plans of Action outlining their roles as Ocean Education Resource Teachers in their schools.

The Cooperative Program for Earth System Education (CPESE) – with assistance from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Weather Service and the State University of New York (SUNY) at Brockport – is a major collaboration between the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and NOAA that advances NOAA’s mission of Science, Service, and Stewardship by sharing knowledge and information about weather, climate, and the ocean. CPESE facilitates national offering of the DataStreme Atmosphere and DataStreme Ocean courses and supports Project ATMOSPHERE leadership training workshops at the National Weather Service Training Center (Kansas City) for in-service K-12 educators. Over five years, about 3,000 teacher participants will earn graduate credits through a partnership with SUNY at Brockport and become confident Earth science educators capable of implementing engaging, pedagogically appropriate activities in their classrooms. These educators are expected to impact more than 30,000 additional educators and one million K-12 students. In addition to the professional development for in-service K-12 educators, CPESE enables the AMS to design curricula for introductory college-level Earth science courses, which help prepare pre-service educators. CPESE is built on a shared vision that highly trained educators are key to an environmentally and geo-scientifically literate public.

This project will convene a workshop to develop a framework to support Coastal Ecosystem Learning Centers in delivering coordinated educational programming focused on weather-related events. The workshop will be organized by a collaborative group of aquariums and involve institutions from multiple regions of the United States. It will be held at the Aquarium of the Pacific in the winter or early spring of 2013.

The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) offers teacher professional development courses geared toward 4-8th grade teachers in high needs schools and with limited experience in science content. Through the Great Lakes Revealed (GLR) education course, teachers explored the interconnectedness of the Earth’s systems through the unique lens of the Great Lakes region, and learned how climate has changed through time. Through hands-on and inquiry-based activities, MSI Senior Educators guided teacher through lessons and other resources, modeling content and pedagogy best practices, and encouraging knowledge building through a combination of experience, critical thinking and reflection. Participants also interacted with NOAA’s Science on a Sphere, with educators at Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, and with scientists from Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Formal evaluation shows that GLR teachers complete the program with substantially improved content knowledge, teaching skills, and confidence in science teaching, many becoming teacher leaders at their schools. The second stage of the GLR program involves a select group of teachers from the first year’s cohort who will deepen their understanding of climate change in the Great Lakes region by engaging in data-driven problem-based activities. Building on teachers’ content knowledge, this program will help teachers develop mechanisms to search, access, and use high quality tabular, graphical, and visual data to support effective climate change education. NOAA’s Science on a Sphere datasets will play a central role as teachers explore and then develop their own problem-based lessons to deliver to their own students during a Student Summit at MSI.