We are pleased to announce that at this year's California Science Teacher Association (CSTA) Conference there will be an environmental literacy strand. The conference is in Sacramento October 13-15, 2017. We are reaching out to encourage you to submit a proposal for a 90-minute workshop for this strand that provides teachers, schools, and/or districts with resources, strategies, professional learning, instructional materials, or programs that promote environmental literacy and California's Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs), and specifically addresses implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
 
Here are the criteria from the CSTA on what the workshops must include:

    Workshops should share more information about what you and participants will be doing during the course of the workshop; how your session demonstrates what NGSS looks like in the classroom; how the three dimensions of NGSS are integrated into your lesson; and how you see the session fitting into a classroom setting.
    Workshops must address an area of science, be targeted to one or more tracks (e.g. environmental literacy), and may address several areas of emphasis. 90-minutes in length, workshops must be aligned with adopted state standards and may consist of hands-on activities, lecture, demonstration, and/or discussion. Proposals should have appropriate disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and/or crosscutting concepts embedded in the content.
    Workshops and short courses make up the bulk of the content and professional learning opportunities available at the conference. In recognition of their contribution, members who present a workshop or short course receive 50% off of their registration fees. To be a presenter you must register for the conference, but you do not need to register until your workshop is accepted. Also, only the lead presenter for a session gets a 50% discount on registration, not all speakers.   

Workshop proposals are due to CSTA by March 20, 2017. For more information and/or to submit a proposal click here.

We would appreciate it if you would let Ariel Whitson know if you plan to submit a proposal and when it's accepted so we can include your workshop when we do our marketing and outreach nearer the date of the conference. Also, if you would like any members of the Environmental Literacy Steering Committee (ELSC) to give feedback on your proposal before you submit it, please let Ariel know that too. Her email is alewhitson@tenstrands.org.
 

Let's make this a great conference for environmental literacy!


Karen Cowe
ELSC Project Director