Thirteen Moons-Network of Stakeholders
Thirteen Moons represents a mutualistic collaboration between stakeholders working to advance environmental literacy education in the Chesapeake Watershed Region. Our intentional organization focuses on investigating problems of practice facing school districts and exploring solutions to improve district outcomes. Leveraging the expertise of our team, we employ research-based strategies to design and implement environmental literacy lessons, influencing students’ stewardship ethics and behaviors.
Our team, including stakeholders like the Accokeek Foundation, Piscataway Conoy tribal members, university researchers, scholars, and formal and informal educators, brings a unique approach to environmental literacy capacity-building in the Chesapeake Watershed. Under the Institutional Review Board of the University of Maryland, our team is empowered to conduct empirical research on key aspects of the design and implementation of environmental education curricula as we investigate the impact of integrating Indigenous Knowledge (IK) into environmental literacy and general science education on student learning, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as on teachers’ interests, motivations, and inclinations for incorporating culturally responsive environmental literacy education in their future instructional programs.
As a 'proof of concept' and an authentic medium for detailing our approach, the team is developing a Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE) relevant to the existing Terrapins in the Classroom partnership program in Prince George’s County Public School District’s (PGCPS) 8th-grade science curriculum.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) promotes the MWEE as a learner-centered framework that focuses on investigations into local environmental issues and leads to informed action. MWEEs are made up of multiple components that include learning both outdoors and in the classroom and are designed to increase environmental literacy by actively engaging students in building knowledge and meaning through hands-on experiences. In these experiences, the core ideas and practices of multiple disciplines are applied to make sense of the relationships between the natural world and society.
For more information, including on how you can join our partnership team, please contact Amy Green at amygreen@umd.edu
