The class of 2019 included a group of four professional educators who each created new lessons to build their students’ observation skills and to ignite their curiosity about our valley’s lands, plants, and animals.

North Central Region Library’s bilingual librarian, Clare Morrison, is often on the road, traveling between branches in the four-county service area. Clare drew a map of the places she has stopped to observe wildlife as she travels the rural roads of Douglas and Grant County, en-route to her library jobs.

Clare developed a new bilingual (Spanish & English) storytime activity, inviting children to make and use a folding personal journal and then use each of the five senses to learn about the world around them. She selected a set of picture books to read aloud during the activity.

Class member, Susan Miller, is an elementary school reading intervention specialist, and her project was to write and illustrate a non-fiction poem, Ode to Chickaree, embedded with phonics sounds, to use with struggling readers. Her main character is a Douglas squirrel that she watches daily outside of her home’s kitchen window. Her poem describes the squirrel’s habitat and behaviors in verse.

Heidi Hartnell is a kindergarten teacher who strives to connect her students to the world outside of their classroom. She composed a photo A-B-C book featuring local native plants and animals for use with her kindergarten students, part of a year-long curriculum to grow observation skills of their natural world.  Heidi recognizes that some of her students’ families are better resourced than others, and so children enter school with different levels of outdoor experiences. Heidi explains, In the last 10 years I’ve read and researched about the importance of children being in nature for complete child development, especially in the early childhood years… I want to continue teaching in a public school so that I can share my love of the outdoors with all students who come into my classroom, regardless of what their families may be able to offer and/or provide for them. 

Educator Caroline Woolmington’s expertise is in how children learn. She compiled a set of picture books to use as teaching tools, both before and after young children have an outdoor adventure. She suggests that reading aloud to children is a good way to prepare them for new experiences and to ignite their curiosity about the natural world outside.