Educators?

I realize that I did not include any information about myself. I am a homeschooler (11 year old twins, a boy and a girl) and a former corporate lawyer, and am finishing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. As a result of my daughter's interest in bugs, and my son's interest in geology, I have gotten involved in their learning interests and discovered, finally, my true calling. This summer, I volunteered as a nature counselor at a Girl Scout day camp, and found that seeing kids go from being afraid of mealworms to upset that they didn't get to hold the Childean Rose Hair a second or third time. I've done other scout nature programs, and school programs at a local nature center, and decided that this is finally my calling.

As a family, we volunteer in entomology at the National Museum of Natural History in DC, currently working on a 1975 collection from central Iran. We also work in Mineral Sciences stuffing envelopes for the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, and at a small nature center near our house, where we take care of the captive wildlife on display and help with nature programs in general.

Since invertebrates are a particular interest of mine, my programs tend to deal with mini-beasts, and I've gotten a lot of kids to monkey around in swamps and under dead trees. It'd be great to have a place to share stories and tips.

And my environmental husband lawyer was appalled to discover that more than half the items on the entomologist identification page applied in our family. He's coming around to liking bugs, though, and didn't even flinch when we were in the middle of a whitewater rafting trip this summer and the kids spilled the beans about the emperor scorpion and second tarantula that we'd had for several weeks and not told him about...

Antonia Bookbinder

have worked as a guide with groups of visitors, also as volunteer giving plant walks to adults, interpretive walks to groups of school children. As I learned about insects I've mentioned some of the more common ones; perhaps pointing out a 'Tarantula Hawk' plus information about its life habits, or calming a group member that 'that wasp' isn't going to sting because it is a Hover Fly wasp-mimic.

Whatever I do, I like to elicit a sense of wonder, i.e. by taking apart the heads of some members of the Asteraceae, with kids looking at the florets with a hand lens, counting the tiny petals, seeing that the "petals"on radiate heads are ray flowers, etc. Finally: "now you can take a little sunflower to your mom with the words 'here, mom, I brought you a bouquet of flowers'".

I'm not quite sure yet how I'll integrate insects into interpretive walks. For me, ideas have to grow from doing and studying audience reaction.
Recently, I started looking at Odonates along some streams in the San Gabriel foothills. This brought back to mind a workshop in stream ecology I took a couple of years ago. To scoop out a bunch of mud from shallow water, then find out how many different living things are in there -including Odonate nymphs - might give kids a feeling of discovery.

Some of you might be interested in the National Association for Interpretation (I'm a member, though not particularly active because otherwise busy), a professional organization of people engaged in interpreting our natural and cultural heritage.
Finally, I'm happy someone opened this discussion. Some useful ideas and experiences might surface.

I enjoy doing presentations when invited to do so, but I do not have personal transportation, and I need to learn Powerpoint:-) Still, I have lots of props and am generally considered entertaining and informative. I also have a new field guide coming out this spring (shameless plug, sorry).

I am an interpreter with a county forest preserve. I do a variety of programs involving cultural history as well as natural history. (The nature ones are my favorite, though.) I love having a resource like this because I'm -always- getting "What's that?" questions while on hikes. I'm getting better, but I'll probably never have ALL the answers!

I am a naturalist and I do environmental programs revolving around the subject of Odonate natural history. I would very pleased if there was active discussion about EE, here at this site.

Kurt Mead

math and physics teacher so we often take students from his school on field trips to local preserves, especially the Environmental Science classes. We are also part of the larger organizations - the Chicago Wilderness and the Volunteer Stewardship Network. Because of those we get frequent requests from local schools who are interested in stewardship activities. Activities range from cutting buckthorn and weeding garlic mustard or white sweetclover to seed collecting, tree, bug, and/or wildflower identification, hiking and observing, writing, and drawing - in any combination. Many of the students are in schools that are associated with Friends of the Chicago River and so often also spend time in water quality analysis. Not sure what we would have to offer a forum, but are willing to contribute in any way we can. Post some ideas here and see what happens! Welcome!
PS - click on your name at the bottom of your post above and that will take you to your contributor page which you can edit and fill in with lots of interesting information about you and your spider friends!