This year’s National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) conference was extra special because NCSE’s incoming Executive Director, Amanda Townley, was a guest of honor as the President-Elect of NABT.
Our Supporting Teachers team had the opportunity to spend concentrated time with Townley at the conference and dream together about NCSE’s future. In addition, NCSE Teacher Ambassador Rebecca Brewer received the 2023 Evolution Education award and two other teacher ambassadors, Jeremy Cook and Chandler Tawney, were named Outstanding Biology Teacher in their states: Indiana and Michigan, respectively. Of course, NCSE hosted the always-popular Evolution Symposium, which featured science author Riley Black. The Supporting Teachers team also presented sessions on climate change, evolution, and the nature of science, met with hundreds of teachers at our booth in the exhibit hall, and networked with teachers and science educators who share the goal of improving public understanding of science. This conference was truly the highlight of the year for us!
Teachers Tackle Climate Misconceptions in Pre-Conference Workshop
We kicked off the conference with a three-hour pre-conference workshop titled “Tackling Misconceptions in Climate Change: The Power of Place-Based Resources.” Over 30 teachers joined us to engage in activities from our Climate Change in Your Own Backyard lesson set and plan how they can adapt the activities to their own context. We were thrilled to have NCSE Teacher Ambassador Jeremy Cook present with us and share the place-based activity that he developed for his own students about climate-induced tick population changes.
After the workshop, conference participants continued learning about best practices for teaching about climate change at the keynote by Lauren Feldman, Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. We were encouraged by her talk, “Finding Hope: Challenges and Opportunities in Climate Change Communication,” because it validated so many of the strategies that we have built into our climate change resources for teachers. Following the keynote, we welcomed teachers to our booth at the exhibit hall grand opening. We passed out hundreds of stickers and buttons to our fellow “science geeks” and shared the mission of NCSE with many new faces. The team ended this jam-packed day by enjoying dinner with NCSE’s incoming executive director, Amanda Townley, finding common ground and shared purpose with regard to the Supporting Teachers Program.