ClimeTime
Teaching for the Climate Collaborative
offering Free Professional Development Workshops for Whatcom County Educators
For the 2024-2025 school year, our ClimeTime offerings will consist of four in-person workshops offered throughout the year. Two workshops will build on our combined reputations for offering outdoor education strategies in accessible schoolyard settings. And two will dig deeper into place-based phenomena exploring watersheds and salmon in Whatcom County. Additionally, this year we will work with local high school students for the first time to create resources by youth for youth that complement the watersheds and salmon trainings and can be used in the classroom.
For more details and to register, please visit our Climetime partner, RE Sources.
Questions? Contact Climetime Coordinator, Chris Peñuelas: chris@wildwhatcom.org.
climetime program overview and history
In 2018, the Washington State Legislature created a proviso to support climate science in education. The Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) in partnership with the University of Washington offered grants to host “ClimeTime” professional development for teachers focused on Next Generation Science Standards, climate science, outdoor education strategies and an increased emphasis on traditional ecological knowledge through indigenous partnerships.
Wild Whatcom has joined with other community organizations including Common Threads, Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA), and RE Sources to lead teacher professional development opportunities through the ClimeTime proviso to teachers of Whatcom County. We’ve also partnered directly with the Lummi Nation and Northwest Indian College to incorporate Indigenous Ways of Knowing and environmental justice aspects to the teacher training.
“I am so excited to take my classroom outside this spring to dig into all of the rich content that was introduced through this course - thank you!”
Each year we serve over 120 teachers.
Teachers have reported positive changes about their knowledge, behavior and attitudes about putting outdoor learning and climate science into action in their classrooms.
“Thank you. This course really helped me develop an understanding of Indigenous ways of knowing. I am so excited to continue the work in my classroom and also continuing to learn about the Coast Salish ways of knowing that I can integrate into my units of instruction. ”
Click here to see more about five years of ClimeTime.
climetime in the news
“In 2017 the Washington state legislature passed a multi-million dollar budget proviso for K-12 science education with an emphasis on climate science. The result was ClimeTime, which funds projects and events that connect public school teachers with environmental organizations in their communities, as well as teacher trainings like the one outside Olympia.
At the end of its first year, an estimated 7,500 public school teachers, mostly elementary school teachers — or just over 1 in 10 of the approximately 66,400 public school teachers in Washington state — had taken advantage of professional development resources made available through ClimeTime.”
support our local teachers today
Thank you to OSPI for initiating and funding this project and for our local partners for your ongoing inspiration, thought partnership, and collaboration. We are eager to continue working with and supporting our local public school teachers together!
Interested in supporting efforts like this one? Consider a donation to our work today!