ACCESS Water workshops provide teachers with hands-on learning. (Photo courtesy of Kelly Albus.)
Teachers who work with students of all ages are invited to a Junior Master Gardener and Citizen Science Training July 12 in Fort Worth.
Onsite check-in will begin at 8:30 a.m., and the training will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Tarrant County Plaza Building, 200 Taylor St. Registration is required at tx.ag/July12TeacherTraining, the cost is $25, and lunch is included.
The training is provided by the ACCESS Water program, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service Tarrant County Office, Junior Master Gardener program and Texas Water Resources Institute (TWRI).
“We will be equipping teachers with two great curricula and how to help set up their school to succeed with these programs,” said Kelly Albus, Ph.D., TWRI research scientist with the Urban WISH team at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Dallas. “Each attendee will go home with complete lesson plans put together by teachers, for teachers.”
The workshop will include an overview of the Junior Master Gardener program and curriculum, citizen science educational strategies, hands-on outdoor learning, discussion of local environmental issues, and TEKS-aligned curricula and toolkits for classrooms. Junior Master Gardener is the international youth gardening program of the university cooperative Extension system, created and managed by the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service.
The program provides eight Texas Education Agency continuing professional education hours as well as Texas Environmental Education Advisory Committee credit, if applicable.
Junior Master Gardener curricula options will also be offered online while registering. Brittnay Meyer, AgriLife Extension horticulturist for Tarrant County, will send an invoice for any JMG curricula options chosen during checkout.
“Since 2021, our ACCESS Water partnership has offered innovative workshops for educators to harness the powerful tool of citizen and community science for student engagement,” Albus said. “We invite teachers and students to participate in a new frontier of science by actively monitoring the air and water in their own communities.”
The ACCESS workshops are jointly funded by TWRI, AgriLife Extension, Texas A&M Engineering’s SPARK! Program and the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board. In 2022, the program trained 42 teachers, impacting more than 6,000 students.
Interested educators can sign up for the workshop at tx.ag/July12TeacherTraining. For more information, contact Meyer at 817-884-1946 or brittnay.meyer@ag.tamu.edu, or Albus at kelly.albus@ag.tamu.edu.
