On Tuesday, September 13 at 7:00 pm ET the Planet Stewards Book Club is excited to hold its first meeting of this academic year! We’ll be discussing My Octopus Teacher (available at Netflix). Discussion questions are now posted on our website. To join the event by video, click on the following link a few minutes before the event start time: meet.google.com/pcu-wjwx-kmh.  You may need to wait briefly to be let in by the facilitator. Or, you can dial in by phone at: +1 612-361-0505; Then enter the following PIN: 576 707 897#. We look forward to you joining us for a discussion of this exceptionally moving  award winning film.  

You can find all of our Book Club selections and meeting dates for the 2022-2023 academic year on our website. 

And don’t forget, we have over 50 fiction, non-fiction, and young adult selections from past Book Club events - with discussion questions, in our archives. Whether you’re looking to catch up on some knowledge, enjoy a quick fun read, or find a book to use with your students, there’s something for everyone at the NOAA Planet Stewards Book Club  

NOAA Planet Stewards, Elkhorn Slough and South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserves (NERRS) are hosting a simultaneous three-day workshop for educators who work with middle or high school level students.

To register at the physical location you will be attending the workshop and receive more detailed information, visit these links:

• South Slough NERRS Workshop Registration Link
• Elkhorn Slough NERRS Workshop Registration Link

Reserve your place today! Spaces are limited!

If you're looking for educational resources or ideas to plug into your academic planning, check out archived issues of The Watch! Our team has reviewed all content for use by formal and informal educators working to increase their own ocean, climate, and environmental awareness as well as their students and audiences.

If you have an item you'd like to share with our education community, email us at: oceanserviceseducation@noaa.gov. Be sure to include:

• Event/Item announcement title
• Date and time if applicable
• One paragraph description
• Clear thumbnail image
• Link for more information

Coral Reefs: Fast Facts

Looking for some vetted, bite-sized facts or a slide-ready graphic about corals to use in an upcoming presentation or just to bolster your knowledge? The Office for Coastal Management (OCM) has you covered. OCM's Coral Reefs page is just one of many "Fast Fact" topics available — explore what they have to offer.

The NOAA Summer Film Festival is a virtual journey that explores how NOAA’s mission is carried out across the United States and its Territories. Short films provide a snapshot of NOAA’s work throughout the Nation, showing how NOAA data, products, and services are tailored to diverse regional needs.

Starting on August 3, a video was released each Wednesday and will continue through the end of September on the NOAA Regional Collaboration Network webpage. The remaining lineup includes:

• NOAA Pacific Islands Region - September 7
• NOAA Southeast and Caribbean Region - September 14 
• NOAA Alaska Region - September 21

APPLICATIONS NOW OPEN: Are you an educator, or know one, who’d like to spend 11 months working at a federal agency or Congress? The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship is accepting applications for the 2023-2024 year. Teachers will apply their extensive knowledge and classroom experiences to national education program and/or education policy efforts during this Fellowship. There are many sponsoring federal agencies, so check out the full list here and see examples of the work of past Fellows. 

Curious to bring GIS into your classroom? QGreenland is offering a version of their popular beginner workshop tailored just for educators. This workshop is designed for people brand new to GIS who are interested in using the open-source geospatial data platform QGIS with their students. You will leave with an understanding of ways to introduce GIS to your students and curriculum materials to help you do it! Open to both formal and informal educators, with continuing education/graduate credit available. For more information contact Alyse Thurber.

Read Across America (RAA) is the nation’s largest celebration of reading for students. Now, you have the chance to bring the joy of RAA to an entire school when you enter the 2022 RAA Sweepstakes! This year's RAA calendar was created with this belief in mind: No matter who they are or where they live - kids need to read books that represent them. They deserve access to stories as diverse and complex as the society we live in. Winning the sweepstakes will bring these books into your school, but also open new worlds and experiences to students in every single classroom in the public school of your choice.

On the Farm STEM is a free program designed to equip educators with lessons, activities, online learning tools, and professional development to teach science through the lens of agriculture. This upcoming webinar will introduce one phenomenon for each grade band (elementary, middle school, and high school) that can drive student sensemaking. Register for the webinar.

Join Explorer Classroom — a live interactive session that connects young people with National Geographic Explorers — to hear behind-the-scenes stories and interact with cutting-edge scientists, researchers, and powerful storytellers from around the globe. All events are free, open to the public, and include an interactive guide for both students and educators to help learners get the most out of the experience.

VIEW SCHEDULE

Travel virtually to Antarctica with your students through four live sessions from McMurdo research station in the heart of Antarctica facilitated by researcher Dr. Xinzhao Chu and her graduate students. Students will learn about polar science topics such as the upper atmosphere, space weather, seasons in Antarctica, and what it's like to live at the McMurdo station. Students will also be able to chat live with scientists at the end of the world.  These events are also open to the public and will be interesting for  middle school ages and up. Register on the event pages today for the link! Co-hosted by CIRES Education & Outreach and Exploring by the Seat of your Pants.

• September 20 - Introduction to the Upper Atmosphere
• October 11 - Introduction to Space Weather
• October 18 - A Day in the Life at McMurdo
• November 8 - Seasons in the Arctic

Register for one or all four webinars.

1. "Striving for Sustainability Globally" Video Contest for all ages. 

The American Geosciences Institute invites individuals and teams to submit a brief, original video exploring the many ways people are using the Earth sciences to make decisions that maintain and strengthen the planet’s ability to support thriving life! Learn more here

2. "Sustainability in Action" Photography Contest for all ages.

Sustainable practices promote Earth’s capacity to support life throughout the biosphere, which involves interactions with other Earth systems such as the geosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. How does geoscience knowledge help support sustainability where you live? With your camera, capture an image of the ways geoscience informs local efforts to build a sustainable world. Learn more about the contest.

3. "Our Sustainable World" Visual Arts Contest for Grades K-5 

A “sustainable” planet is one that supports living things — and that means taking care of all the things that life depends on, including land, water, air, and other living things. What does a sustainable world look like to you? What is necessary to have or change? What is not necessary? Use your artistic ability to produce an original work of art that shows how land, water, air, and living things interact in a sustainable world. Learn more about the contest.

4."Geoscience for Sustainable Development Goals" Essay Contest for Grades 6-9. 

We have all been called upon to help meet 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) articulated by nations around the world. Geoscience - which addresses interactions of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere - can play a critical role in this. How can Earth sciences help achieve SDGs in areas such as poverty, nutrition, education, equality, ecosystems, climate change, and/or industrial innovation? Learn more about the contest.

National Environmental Education Foundation’s annual Climate Superstars Challenge registration is live! Register now and get ready to join the challenge starting on October 1.

Climate Superstars is an online environmental challenge that gets kids excited about the environment and how they can take an active role in caring for its future. Middle school classrooms and after-school programs (Grades 6-8) complete short tasks geared towards environmental literacy and energy efficiency. Classes that complete at least 7 tasks in the month of October (1-31) will be entered into a drawing to win one of six $5,000 e-vouchers for Samsung products like tablets, laptops, and interactive displays to modernize their classrooms. 

This video is the first in a series highlighting “Surprisingly STEM” careers around NASA and highlights marine biologists working to protect the animals and ecosystem at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA’s Kennedy Space Center is known for its launch pads, rocket launches and cutting-edge technology -- it’s also a national wildlife refuge! The center’s surrounding ecosystem supports one of the highest numbers of threatened and endangered species anywhere in the nation, and NASA has a team of biologists whose mission is to protect and preserve these areas. Biologists share how their ecological work contributes to the agency’s larger mission and how they personally ended up on a boat in the Florida wetlands doing exciting work for NASA!

The new SkySci for Kids website is designed to provide children ages 5-10 with playful avenues for learning about weather, climate change, and related atmospheric science topics. On the site you’ll find short articles, online games, storybooks, and videos for informal science learning. The materials are designed to allow kids to explore either independently or with a parent or caregiver. SkySci for Kids is a project of the UCAR Center for Science Education. Development of SkySci for Kids was made possible with funding from the National Science Foundation.

The Ocean Optimism Podcast

The Ocean Optimism podcast shares stories, not often heard, about ocean conservation successes. The inaugural episode features Dr. Nancy Knowlton, coral reef biologist, and one of the founders of the #OceanOptimism movement. Listen to all of the released episodes and check out more ocean optimism on Twitter using #OceanOptimism, the website oceanoptimism.org, and green.org.

This new curriculum brings GIS and Greenland into the classroom to investigate the importance of the Greenland Ice Sheet on a global scale. As students explore the driving question ‘How is the Greenland Ice Sheet changing?’ they utilize a video tutorial series to develop GIS skills that will enable them to analyze glacial retreats and calculate the amount of global sea-level rise that can be attributed to the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Finally, the curriculum addresses misconceptions about regional sea level rise as students analyze risk to their chosen community.

Note: Developers are currently looking for undergraduate, community college, or advanced high school curriculum testers who are interested in bringing GIS into their classrooms and engaging students in authentic analysis (stipends available). Learn more about these materials and sign up.

The curriculum consists of two modules with 4-5 units each and combines real polar field data from Greenland with innovative teaching methods to strengthen students' knowledge of polar science and build student connections to polar places. The units contain a series of 360-degree interactive environments, field images, maps, geospatial data, and videos to immerse students in the place and dive into questions about timescales, seasonal and year-to-year change, and interconnected Earth system elements.

Learn more about these materials at PolarPass. Sign up PolarPass@Colorado.EDU

More than 40 million people across the western United States rely on water from the Colorado River Basin, a basin that is experiencing a decades-long drought (megadrought). In this *Data Puzzle, students analyze and interpret a long-term record (1900-2021) of temperature and precipitation data from the region to construct an explanatory model from the driving question, “What is causing the megadrought in the Colorado River Basin?” and to identify strategies to reverse/reduce these drought conditions. *Data Puzzles are a new resource that combine classroom-friendly datasets with Ambitious Science Teaching instructional practices to help students make sense of phenomena. Check out the full data puzzle collection.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Generate is a cooperative board game in which students work in teams to explore energy choices and learn about the considerations and costs in determining what type of energy generation to build. Adaptable for use with middle through college levels, the game supports the Next Generation Science Standards and encourages a deeper examination of energy issues among students. 

The NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries is seeking proposals under the Great Lakes B-WET program. Great Lakes B-WET is a competitive grant program that supports existing, high quality environmental education programs, fosters the growth of new, innovative programs, and encourages capacity building and partnership development for environmental and place-based education programs throughout the entire Great Lakes watershed (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). Successful projects provide Meaningful Watershed Educational Experiences (MWEEs) for students and related professional development for teachers, while advancing regional Great Lakes watershed education priorities. The Great Lakes B-WET program is funded through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Take a look at the applicant resources.

Contact the Great Lakes B-WET program coordinator for questions: sarah.a.waters@noaa.gov or phone at (989) 312-3520.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) administers Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST), created by Congress in 1983, on behalf of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The awards are the nation’s highest honors for teachers of STEM, including Computer Science. This year's (2022-2023) awards will honor science, technology, engineering, or mathematics teachers working in grades 7-12.

Applications and/or nominations are now open. Recipients of the award receive the following:

• A certificate signed by the President of the United States.
• A paid trip to Washington, D.C., to attend a series of recognition events and professional development opportunities.
• A $10,000 award from the National Science Foundation.
• An opportunity to build lasting partnerships with colleagues across the nation.

Nominations close on January 9, 2023. Applications must be completed by February 6, 2023.