The Cooperative Program for Earth System Education (CPESE) is a joint education project led by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The project aims to share knowledge about weather, climate, oceans, and coasts with pre-service and in-service teachers, K-12 students, and graduate students. The project's objectives align with three key goals of the 2021-2040 NOAA Education Strategic Plan: fostering a Science-Informed Society, promoting a Ready, Responsive, and Resilient community, and cultivating a Future Workforce. CPESE's major objectives include providing nationwide professional development (PD) for K-12 educators, offering fellowships for graduate students in atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrologic sciences, and undertaking a planning year to reimagine AMS's model and methods for teacher PD course delivery. This planning year will focus on reaching more underserved teachers, schools, and climate-vulnerable communities. The long-term goals of CPESE are to establish a diverse community of practice among educators who are weather, ocean, and climate literate and adept at accessing NOAA data, and to promote retention and growth of graduate students in NOAA mission-related sciences, leading to careers in NOAA-mission disciplines. Key project activities include administering fellowships to 2-5 graduate students annually, offering DataStreme Atmosphere and Ocean as well as Project Atmosphere for graduate credit in partnership with Pennsylvania Western University (PennWest), and awarding microcredentials, such as the PennWest/AMS DataStreme certificate and/or Certified AMS Teacher distinction, to teachers who complete multiple AMS courses. DataStreme courses are offered virtually each fall and spring semester to approximately 70 teachers per term, while Project Atmosphere reaches 16-20 NOAA-supported teachers each summer through online coursework and a one-week workshop at the NWS Training Center. AMS updates DataStreme course materials annually and the Current Studies investigations weekly. In Year 2, AMS will plan for revisions to make Current Studies more dynamic and media-driven and update Project Atmosphere with newer maps, data, NGSS integration, and the 5E model of instruction. A network of DataStreme Mentor Teams supports AMS courses by recruiting teachers, providing learning support, participating in small group discussions, and offering grading input to PennWest faculty members. Mentors receive honoraria, continued PD opportunities, and assistance in participating in state or national educator conferences. In Year 2, a subset of mentors will form an advisory group to help re-envision the AMS course model, with the support of DEI experts and instructional designers (IDs). As AMS modernizes its course model, the project's external evaluator will revise the programmatic logic model and evaluation plan to include evaluative questions connecting participant demographics with teacher and school impact. Key program outcomes include equipping DataStreme mentors with the knowledge, skills, confidence, and motivation to serve effectively, developing similar capacities for teacher participants (including classroom content application and knowledge transfer to students, peers, and administrators), increasing the number of teachers from underrepresented groups and their impact on underrepresented students, establishing an educator community of practice capable of understanding and applying NOAA-related science content (fostering a more ready, responsive, and resilient society that promotes climate justice), preparing graduate students for careers in disciplines that support NOAA's mission, and strengthening NOAA-AMS and external partnerships.

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) Education Program is continuing its development and implementation of a highly innovative NOAA/AMS partnership built on the recognition that teachers are key to realizing NOAA's and AMS's shared vision of an environmentally literate public and a geoscience workforce that reflects the human diversity of American society. This proposed phase of the program focuses on the crucial professional development of pre-college teachers in the pedagogical content knowledge of the essential principles and fundamental concepts of the atmospheric and ocean sciences. Project Activities and Expected Outcomes: Central to the program is the offering of the AMS DataStreme Ocean and DataStreme Atmosphere courses for in-service teachers and the content-similar undergraduate AMS Online Weather Studies and Online Ocean Studies courses for pre-service teachers. All AMS courses include delivery of engaging inquiry-based investigations of the ocean and atmospheric environments employing Internet-delivered NOAA products and services. The proposed project will expand a cadre of pre-college teachers well trained in the essential principles and fundamental concepts, online data sources, and pedagogical issues related to the teaching of atmospheric and ocean sciences from an Earth system perspective. Participating in-service teachers are committed to changing the way they teach atmospheric or oceanographic topics, will serve as resource agents in their schools, and are expected to provide leadership in science curriculum reform at local, state, and national levels. During this proposed funding, AMS DataStreme courses will train 4,000 teachers via semester-long graduate courses at 50 or more sites nationally via Local Implementation Teams (LITs). Within two years of training, in-service teachers will directly impact 40,000 other teachers and 1,400,000 pre-college students. AMS undergraduate courses with similar pedagogical and content underpinnings will impact thousands of pre-service teachers on hundreds of campuses. Rationale: The AMS, working closely with NOAA line offices and personnel, outstanding pre-college teachers, and science educators around the country, is transforming Earth system science education across the pre-college curriculum by addressing what and how teachers teach. Trained content-competent teachers are essential to realizing a scientifically literate public and creating a high-quality geoscience workforce that reflects and benefits from the diversity of American society. The AMS recognizes that teachers must experience learning that incorporates an Earth system science perspective and develop pedagogical content knowledge if they are to more effectively deliver authentic inquiry-based instruction in their classrooms. Major Project Partners: All NOAA line offices have been and will continue to be partners as AMS assists NOAA in advancing its goals of environmental assessment and prediction, protection of life and property, and the fostering of global environmental stewardship. The State University of New York grants tuition-waived graduate-level credit for the DataStreme courses.

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.

The American Meteorological Society (AMS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) work together to share knowledge and information about weather and climate, ocean, and coasts with educators and students across the country. The goal of this effort is to build a scientifically informed and engaged society and a diverse STEM workforce prepared to respond to environmental hazards. AMS facilitates a national offering of the DataStreme Atmosphere and DataStreme Ocean courses and supports Project ATMOSPHERE leadership training workshops at the National Weather Service Training Center for in-service K-12 educators, with focus on those at schools with considerable numbers of students underrepresented in STEM. By 2023, about 2,100 educators will earn graduate credits through a partnership with California University of Pennsylvania and become confident Earth science educators. These educators are expected to impact more than 20,000 additional educators and several hundred thousand K-12 students.

Communities in Colorado are increasingly experiencing major disruptions from environmental hazards, such as wildfire, flood, and drought. With this rise in hazardous events, there is a pressing need for communities to increase their resilience. An interdisciplinary team from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Education & Outreach Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder has developed and implemented an innovative, action-oriented youth engagement project that targets rural Colorado students, teachers, and communities. Our engagement model 15 empowers youth i) to envision community resilience through immersive scenario-based role play based using a solid understanding of the relevant science, ii) to learn about natural hazards through engaging place-based lessons, iii) to initiate conversations about hazard preparedness from within communities, and iv) to develop and implement student-led resilience action projects and participate in community resilience expos. A needs assessment disseminated to Colorado teachers guided the project team in the development of all instructional materials and allowed for customizing the content to teacher needs. The project team developed three units (one of wildfire, flood, and drought) for middle and high school students that consist of three parts: place-based data-focused lessons to introduce the hazard, a scenario-based role-play game with a focus on youth empowerment, and a design challenge for students to develop an idea for a resilience action project. Teachers can choose to teach any or all parts and invite community resilience stakeholders and practitioners to share their work with their students, and support students in designing and implementing action projects. Some teachers and students chose to host a Community Resilience Expo, where they invited the public to learn more about the hazard and what resources exist in the community to help prepare for the hazard. The project aimed to accomplished the following three objectives: 1) Increase Colorado secondary teachers’ knowledge and confidence to teach about local natural hazards, and to facilitate discussions about community resilience; 2) Increase Colorado youth’s understanding of natural hazards, their community’s vulnerability, and their involvement in resilience planning efforts, and 3) Enhance the capacity and empowerment of young people in Colorado to engage in dialogue with their peers, families, and community stakeholders about community resilience issues and identify, develop, and implement resilience actions. The project evaluation explored the efficacy of the program model and studied the impact of the project activities on students and teachers. The project filled a critical gap in Colorado’s resilience planning which does not include teachers and youth. The project was guided by partners from the NOAA RISA program Western Water Assessment, seven NOAA science advisors, and was implemented together with over 40 community partners, school partners and collaborators from across Colorado. Over the course of the four-year program, the project trained and supported 88 teachers, engaged nearly 2,000 students, and resulted in 9 Resilience Expo events across rural Colorado.

Among the most geographically isolated islands in the world, Maui’s fragile environment is highly vulnerable to sudden (hurricanes, flooding) and prolonged (drought, ocean acidification, sea-level rise) environmental changes. The University of Hawaiʻi Maui College seeks to build an environmentally literate and resilient community equipped to address, manage, and mitigate the challenges associated with environmental events and hazards. Building Environmental Resiliency Leaders (BERL) has three main goals: 1) Develop environmental hazards modules specific to Hawai’i that can be integrated into high-school curriculum; 2) Strengthen students’ understanding of environmental hazards and build self-efficacy in being contributors towards community resilience; and 3) Create community awareness of and ability to prepare for environmental hazards. By partnering with all 10 Maui County public and private high schools, BERL seeks to empower 200 environmentally resilient high school youth leaders —including Native Hawaiian, underrepresented, and low-income students in grades 9 through 12— throughout the islands of Maui, Molokaʻi, and Lanaʻi. The BERL project will develop the Environmental Resiliency Youth Leaders certification program with curriculum to engage students in active learning through innovative Problem-based Learning (PBL) group projects where students select a research topic informed by climate resiliency educational modules and consult with community subject matter experts; including partners from the National Weather Service, Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, University of Hawaiʻi Sea Grant, Maui Emergency Management Agency, Maui County energy Commissioner, and Hawaiʻi Emergency Management Agency. Specifically, curriculum will integrate and align: 1) Overview of environmental events & hazards: tropical cyclones/hurricanes, drought/fires, ocean acidification, and seal level rise/flooding ; 2) Local scenarios & experiential outdoor learning; 3) US Climate Resiliency Toolkit; and 4) Development of resiliency plan to work towards either a) utilizing school as resiliency hub site; or b) addressing long-term resiliency to prolonged environmental changes. As a culminating event, students will present their final projects and host workshops to the broader community at local or regional events with a potential reach of 90,000 annually over three project years. In addition, BERL will hold an annual Resiliency Awareness Day, reaching 1,000 students annually, to build community awareness and resources. Amidst the threat of COVID-19 and necessary safety measures, BERL is prepared to mobilize an online curriculum for students with online presentations and virtual events to reach the broader community. BERL aligns with NOAA’s mission to educate and motivate individuals to apply environmental science to increase stewardship and resilience to environmental hazards by creating a cadre of youth environmental resiliency leaders, trained educators, and broadly reaching over half of the Maui County population. The project employs a culturally relevant, place-based, and PBL approach where 40 teams of students engage in research projects to build environmental literacy at their high schools and the wider community. In alignment with NOAA's Education Strategic Plan (2015-2035), BERL seeks to “educate and inspire people to use Earth system science toward improving ecosystem stewardship and increasing resilience to environmental hazards."

Communities in Colorado are increasingly experiencing major disruptions from environmental hazards, such as fire, flood, and drought. Low-income housing neighborhoods and vulnerable community members in under-resourced rural areas are often disproportionately impacted by these hazards. With the rise in hazardous events across the state under a changing climate, there is a pressing need for communities to become more resilient through better preparation and planning. The Hazard Education, Awareness and Resilience Task Force (HEART Force) program, facilitated by the NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) Education & Outreach group at CU Boulder, empowers rural secondary students and teachers to act as the change agents to build community resilience against natural hazards. With continued funding, we will continue to support teachers statewide to implement HEART Force curriculum, a place-based curriculum that uses authentic data sources, scenario-based role-play games and the Earth Force process to inspire civic action. We will also be supporting four classrooms across Colorado to go deeper with the curriculum through a quarter or semester-long elective course, by selecting a vulnerable neighborhood to partner with and planning action steps together with more support from CIRES staff, community partners, and local emergency managers.

Arizonans face environmental hazards from extreme heat, drought, and flooding. Watershed Management Group and partner Arizona Project WET’s “Recharge the Rain” project addressed these threats by building environmental literacy among 4-12th grade teachers, students, and the public. The project centered on educator professional training and hands-on water harvesting skills. Participants moved through a continuum from awareness to knowledge gain, to conceptual understanding, and ultimately to action. Utilizing data and experts from NOAA assets, we strengthened the capacity of residents to be resilient to our local climate threats. This 4.5 year project 1) developed and immersed 14,452 students in STEAM curriculum incorporating water harvesting that increases understanding of earth systems, engineering design, and weather; 2) applied systems thinking to train 52 teachers and 191 community volunteers in water harvesting practices and citizen-science data collection; 3) involved 8,289 Tucson community members in water harvesting principles; 4) implemented 21 teacher/student-led water harvesting projects at schools; and 5) celebrated our community work with student artwork. RtR became a call for action and an inspiration for change and adaptation to extreme weather conditions in the urban environments of the Sonoran Desert putting Tucson at the core of understanding climate, adaptation, and community.