Spatially Connecting Kids to the Bay

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or our Livebinders site (links useful to Bay education)

Mission

To provide meaningful watershed educational experience to every Middle and High School Student in Prince William County, Virginia, fostering their environmental stewardship and promoting their educational achievement.

Goals by July 2012

Provide Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEES) for over 16,000 middle school and high school students across 27 schools in Prince William County.

Deliver professional development and technical assistance to enhance capacity of 50 teachers of 6th grade, high school earth science and environmental science.

Objectives for 2009-2010

1. Develop an MWEE-enhanced SOL curriculum for 6th grade, incorporating schoolyard stewardship, field experience w/probeware, and computer-based mapping, impact analysis, and outreach by August 2009.

2. Provide a 3-day training workshop in August 2009 for a team of 20 6th grade teachers from across all 17 PWC schools with 6th graders.

3. Through field studies, schoolyard stewardship, and computer-based learning experiences have 5,400 6th graders per year, starting in 2009, participate in a meaningful watershed experience.

4. Foster a professional learning community among alumni of MWEE teacher training through two half-day follow up sessions in fall and spring semesters.

5. Develop a user-friendly Web interface to enhance students' data entry, access, visualization, and analysis of watershed-wide storm water and water quality data from Occoquan headwaters on Bull Run Mountain to Chesapeake Bay, and for posting student-generated stewardship project results.

6. Consistent with the recent Chesapeake B-WET Evaluation (2007), collect baseline data for monitoring and evaluation for this project's performance and impact upon students, teachers, and Bay tributary ecosystems; also collect and analyze post-delivery evaluations from the first year cohorts of project trainees and student participants.

7. Liaise with other Chesapeake B-WET initiatives as feasible to help ensure lessons learned from this PWC project can be transferred to its peers, and vice versa.

In the News

• "Down by the Bay," by Tara Laskowski, Mason Spirit, Fall 2009, p. 29.
• "For Students, Science May Get a Bit Wet - Bay program to offer schools lessons in field," by Jennfier Buske, The Washington Post, July 11, 2009.
• "Learning to Love the Chesapeake Bay Watershed," by Tara Laskowski, University News, June 8, 2009.

Collaborators and Supporters

Initiatives have been realized in partnership with:

• Fairfax County [Virginia], Department of Public Works
• Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin
• Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments
• National Park Service, National Capital Region
• Prince William County [Virginia] Public Schools

And with vital support from:

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Chesapeake Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) program

           Virginia Chesapeake Bay Restoration Fund                                                               Virginia Environmental Endowment

For More Information

For more information about this NOAA-funded partnership, please contact either of the following:

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