UTSA students and pre-service teachers learn how to bring the classroom outdoors

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(Oct. 26, 2015) — Every semester, hundreds of students from the College of Education and Human Development (COEHD) Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching gather at Eisenhower Park to learn about the environment. For eight hours, facilitators from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) join COEHD professors for a workshop to teach these students about all things environmental education, including a hike guided by TPWD volunteer master naturalists.

The workshop is part of Project WILD, an international conservation education program that provides pre- and in-service teachers with environmental curriculum developed by the Council for Environmental Education.

“Project WILD’s lessons are focused on issues around ecology, the environment, and wildlife,” said Christine Moseley, COEHD professor and Project WILD facilitator. “We want our students to get some training and curriculum material in order to learn how to take kids and deliver lessons outdoors.”

All students enrolled in the early childhood (EC) through sixth grade certification program are required to attend the Project WILD. This semester, more than 150 UTSA students, community members, and in-service teachers attended the workshop.

“This workshop is designed towards UTSA students but open to the community,” said Moseley. “All EC through sixth grade certification majors, by the time they graduate, will have received training in Project WILD and Growing Up WILD, the early childhood component of Project WILD.”

COEHD also hosts a Project WILD workshop entirely in Spanish, facilitated by associate professor Dr. Maria Arreguin-Anderson, for bilingual education majors. This Spanish-language workshop, Moseley said, was the first of its kind in the state.

“Project WILD is truly a collaborative project,” said Moseley. “When the students graduate from the EC through sixth grade program, they have actually had multiple experience with environmental curricula.”

The program also brings together other environmental education organizations, including the San Antonio River Authority, the San Antonio Water System, the Edwards Aquifer, and San Antonio Parks and Recreation.

This spring, UTSA’s Project WILD will be featured on an upcoming television segment on TPWD TV. The segment will showcase UTSA’s teacher training aspect of the program along with features from Project WILD at Stephen F. Austin State University and through TPWD’s Susan Campbell.

“Project WILD has really opened up collaborations and partnerships with different agencies,” said Moseley, who has been a program facilitator for the last 10 years. “It has opened up a lot of doors that have allowed our students to be involved in field trips and other curricula training.”

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Learn more about the UTSA Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, housed in the College of Education and Human Development.

For more information, visit Project WILD Project WILD.

Republished with permission from COEHD News. View the original article.

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