![]() ![]() Small grant funds are made available to classrooms to support the material costs of implementing projects on behalf of their chosen endangered species. Members of the Hero Society – volunteer content-area experts – are available to the young heroes throughout the Quest to provide advice and mentorship. At the end, students Apply their knowledge by engaging in a hands-on, solution-oriented project and then Teach others to engage a broader audience in their work. The Quest is stitched together as a hero’s journey narrative to guide students through a GREAT project-based learning process – Gathering, Researching, and Exploring and Explaining. Developed collaboratively and in partnership with coalitions of environmental organizations, Quests feature the very best content (i.e., image and film, text, activities, curriculum, citizen science projects) relevant to a Quest’s focus (an ecosystem, a trophic cascade, or a species group). Project Hero is a web-based, student-facing, project-based learning framework that guides students through “Quests” on behalf of species and ecosystems locally relevant to them. In development for almost four years, Project Hero will be available and free to all teachers in Fall 2018. Today, Project Hero is launching with the goal of engaging and empowering students to become heroes – problem-solvers and change makers – for the species and ecosystems around them. ![]() In 2012, when Carter-Jones became Executive Director of the Captain Planet Foundation, the motivation to provide all students, everywhere, with the same experiences as those featured in the film became the inspiration for Project Hero. They must be empowered to make a difference. All kids who learn about biodiversity loss should be allowed to engage their empathy on behalf of endangered species. Moved to the core by this film, Carter-Jones thought to herself – with today’s technology, this is a scalable model. ![]() Sitting in the audience at the 2009 Green Schools Conference film screening was Leesa Carter-Jones, who at the time was Executive Director of USGBC Georgia. Importantly, the film features the original students – as adults – reflecting on the profound transformative impact of this project and how this approach to learning and action empowered them to be true agents of change for their world. The shrimp population had rebounded the ecosystem had flourished with the return of at least 18 different rare songbird species and the ranchers reported better water retention on their property. More than 25,000 students had contributed to more than 300 restoration projects along several miles of streambank – with some sections of riparian forest stretching 25 feet in the air. And before long, saving the freshwater California shrimp became the culminating event when the school district taught students about threatened and endangered species.īy the time the film was created, this engaging and empowering way of teaching about threatened and endangered species had been going on for almost two decades. Soon, other classes in the school joined in. Rogers’ students became so invested and ignited by their work that they could not stop talking about it. They finally settled on a species to save – the freshwater California shrimp – and began a journey of discovery to figure out what was threatening the species and what meaningful action they could take on its behalf.ĭuring this inquiry process, the students discovered that removal of riparian buffers in local streambanks was causing habitat loss. The shrimp needed shady, cool waters – but ranchers were denuding their stream banks in an effort to better ‘water their cattle.’ The students approached a rancher in their community who was (unintentionally) contributing to the shrimp’s decline and convinced him to let them plant willows along his streambanks. But the energized and engaged students dug into the data and found a few species that needed help in their county. In the early days, before Google and smartphones, that challenge was no easy task. ![]() In that moment, Laurette Rogers spontaneously suggested to her students that the class research what was endangered around them, adopt an endangered species, and then do something to save it. It is the story of a fourth-grade teacher in Marin County, California who could not – for one more year – ignore the earnest look in her students’ faces when they learned about endangered species and wanted to know what they could “do.” She could not have them do another superficial activity that would not make a real difference. If you have not seen the film – watch it. In 2009, a short documentary titled “A Simple Question: The Story of STRAW” was shown at the first Green Schools National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Courtney Kimmel, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Captain Planet Foundation and Leesa Carter-Jones, Executive Director, Captain Planet Foundation ![]()
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