On March 1st the EarthEcho team partnered with Los Angeles Unified School District to provide a dynamic professional development workshop for science educators in the district. More than 60 educators and district staff joined us to learn how to use our EarthEcho Expeditions materials and bring proven service learning strategies to STEM classrooms. This workshop was held at the amazing Los Angeles Environmental Learning Center at Hyperion, a fantastic educational resource for teachers to connect students to both the solid waste and wastewater that they generate and the impacts of managing that waste. As you can tell from the picture, we were all inspired to action as we discussed opportunities to engage students - here we all let our inner action figures out!

I’m looking forward to learning more about how these educators have incorporated service learning and project-based learning into their classrooms in the coming months. The best hope we have to solve the environmental problems facing our communities is to have a population that has the knowledge to understand complex environmental issues, the civic skills to be successful advocates for their own needs, and the motivation to act on their own behalf. After meeting the dynamic teachers of LAUSD, I am confident that we can support the efforts of young people to creatively respond to the environmental problems we face, both locally and globally.

Sincerely,

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Philippe Cousteau Jr

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