Letter from Our AmeriCorps Environmental Educator
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Rosemary Hopson worked for SCD as the AmeriCorps Environmental Educator through the Washington Service Corps from last October to July of this year. She is originally from Wyoming and has a bachelor’s degree in Zoology and Botany. Prior to coming to SCD, she taught students with her home county 4-H program. During her term at SCD, she really enjoyed getting to know the PNW area and says that salmon are definitely one of her favorite animals!
This fall she will be moving on to begin a PhD program in ecology at Utah State University where she will study seed dispersal. We are so proud of the work she has done during her time at SCD, teaching thousands of students across Snohomish County and Camano Island. We asked her to share some reflections about her experiences at SCD, and this is what she had to say:
“Macroinvertebrate,” I say, pointing to myself.
“Macroinvertebrate!” the 4th grade students repeat from their desks.
“BUG!” we all say aloud together as we move our hands to sign “bug” in American Sign Language.
This has been a wild year for youth education and as I wrap up and reflect on the past school year’s lessons I am evaluating what works, what doesn’t, and what I want to change. Thinking about these questions, evaluating my favorite teaching techniques, and considering what we would like to develop further. For me, my favorite teaching technique is from Project GLAD. What is Project GLAD, you ask?
Project GLAD stands for Guided Language Acquisition Design. That is a lot of teaching jargon, but it is a learning model designed to support students build language proficiency by providing teachers with a variety of evidence-based techniques. Our Youth Education Coordinator, Lily Cason, attended a Project GLAD training program in June 2019 and has since shared her knowledge with the rest of the youth education team. We started incorporating these techniques and the one that quickly became my favorite is using callbacks.
To create a callback, I choose a difficult vocabulary word from the lesson. I will then pick a synonym for that word and look up the American Sign Language (ASL) movements for the synonym. Then, you put it together in the classroom. I explain to the students that when I want to get their attention, I will say the vocabulary word, they then repeat the vocabulary word, and together we all do the ASL movement and say the synonym. For example, in our Four Rain Drops lessons I will say “watershed,” the students will repeat “watershed,” and then we will all do the sign for and say “drain” because a watershed drains into the same body of water.
Macroinvertebrate, macroinvertebrate, bug.
I like this technique because it helps students remember the tricky vocabulary, it provides me a way to get the students attention, and it is really fun. Students enjoy doing the motions, and will remember them over weeks between lessons. A fifth grader at an elementary school in Monroe approached me after a lesson and said that she loves learning the sign language because that is how she and her siblings communicate during dinner when it gets too loud.
Teaching is one of the most important jobs, and it is also one of the most rewarding. Being able to support students in a variety of ways has been my favorite part of teaching at the district. I look forward to providing resources and support for further developing these techniques.
