PAEE in Philadelphia

Before the start of my student teaching, I was offered to attend the Pennsylvania Association of Environmental Educators (PAEE) with Dr. Curry. When I saw this opportunity come to light, I jumped on it. I was super excited to be able to learn even more about environmental education and how I could further use it in my classroom.

While there, I attended workshops that were not only interesting but super helpful. My main focus was on insects and macroinvertebrates. I started off with a workshop called why do we LOVE to HATE bugs? This workshop opened me up to how I could and should approach teaching content matter like insects. There's a stigma against insects, so to get people to truly appreciate them you need to be careful with how you go about wording your information and how you would go about introducing these "scary" insects to your classes.

When it came to macroinvertebrates I was thrilled to discover that there is actually an AWESOME website you can go to called macroinvertebrates.org that will allow you to look at all the different families of these macros. This website really allows you to look at all the fine details of these tiny creatures.

Lastly, it wasn't all about bugs when I went there though. A couple other takeaways I had were first off, some really cool apps that can help you identify things outside whenever you are unsure about what you are looking at. Secondly, I learned that in Philadelphia there are a lot of really cool programs to push for making Philidelphia a greener place. It was awesome to see the efforts that Philidelphia is making. Who would have thought such a big city would have such a big push for a greener world.