The capstone project for the Climate Change Academy is the development of an implementation plan (based on the Meaningful Watershed Education Experience  and the Environmental Literacy Model - ELM) for use in your classroom or center. Through four Academies, we have had participants develop plans to teach in classrooms of third graders through college upperclassmen and to bring climate change to students and public visitors at aquariums, nature centers, and outdoor environmental education facilities.

Our goal is for you to feel confident in your climate change knowledge and to find and integrate learning opportunities that will help your students grow in their knowledge as well. In each Academy session, we will include implementation/MWEE plan discussion prompts. As our professional learning community develops, we hope that these discussions will foster collaboration and build stronger lessons.

In your Academy application, we asked you to briefly discuss your ideas for bringing climate change into your curriculum or programs in a practical and durable way. As you enter the Academy, we suggest that you take a look at course, school, district, or program documents and see where climate change topics already exist or would naturally fit; we also ask you to consider where MWEE components fit best. Is there a flow of student experiences across grades that you fit into? Are there, or could there be, relationships among schools and non-formal education institutions that can be used to support climate change learning?

With these thoughts in mind, please take a look at the MWEE Guide and the MWEE Toolbox (The MWEE Guide and Fillable Templates from the MWEE Toolbox are in the file below this activity on the course page) and the accompanying webinar recording (available following the webinar on May 21) which outline the information we would like you to share upon completion of the Academy.  We know that your school or institution may require you to organize your lessons using a specific lesson plan format, and we encourage you to use your school's framework. You can use the MWEE template as a way of organizing your lessons, activities, and resources for teaching about climate change, Environmental Literacy, and Earth systems. 

To summarize, Academy participants will be expected to:

• Submit a completed Environmental Literacy Model outlining your plan for integrating climate change topics and how you plan to approach the Essential Elements of a MWEE (Sample ELMs are provided in the Implementation Plan section of this course):
  • Issue Definition
  • Outdoor Field Experience
  • Synthesis and Conclusions
  • Action Projects
• Submit any planning toolbox templates that you may have used in developing your ELM
• Submit drafts of lessons if available

NOTE: Lessons that are part of the ELM do not need to be original; the ELM is provided as a tool for organizing the lessons and activities in support of a MWEE.  Additionally, ELMs can be developed collaboratively and do not need to be a solo effort.

SECOND NOTE: In the planning toolbox there is a MWEE Audit tool.  We suggest that you review this tool as you are developing your implementation plan, as it will give you a good idea about the elements to include.

THIRD NOTE: The completed ELM/Implementation Plan is due by Tuesday August 7. On that date we will hold an in-person callback meeting to share participants' ELMs.  During the Academy we will provide time to work on the ELMs. At the end of the in-person component in June we will ask you to share a "tweet" about your ELM/Implementation Plan.