OCEAN COUNTY – With spring in the air, environmentalists inspired local teachers in crafting green lessons at the 28th Annual Barnegat Bay Environmental Educators Roundtable.
This year’s event, which featured the theme of “Caring for Our Precious Natural Resources: Considering Conservation, Climate and Community,” was held at the Lighthouse Center for Natural Resource Education in Waretown.
It was coordinated by the Ocean County Soil Conservation District (OCSCD). Each year environmental organizations, agencies and groups from around the watershed come together to provide this popular Teachers Professional Development event which included an open house, dinner catered by Bonefish Grill of Brick, workshops, field experiences, two keynote speakers, and door prizes.
OCSCD Director Christine Raabe said the agency has been “effectively coordinating and implementing this professional development event since 1997. The educational programs and opportunities available from all participating agencies, organizations and groups allows a comprehensive approach to watershed education and provides educators with a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach.”
Pinelands Commission Principal Public Programs Specialist Joel M. Mott was manning a promotional table and speaking to attendees about programs of his agency. “I’m here to talk to educators. Part of my job is to keep people aware of the pinelands and I’m here to make connections with more educators to bring the pinelands to them or bring them to the pinelands.”
Mott added that in July a special outdoor workshop on the Pinelands will be held involving teachers.
Debra A. Sommers who serves as education specialist of the Stockton University Maple Grant was several tables away. Her booth featured a number of items including samples of maple syrup, tools used to extract the sap and literature on the project.
“I’m the educator for this program and I’ve taught at middle schools in Galloway as a teacher and they needed an educator for this program,” Sommers said. “I have an environmental science degree and now I am literally back in the woods where I started.”
Sometimes she visits schools and sometimes the students come out to Stockton, she explained, noting that she recently met up with a teacher from Pinelands Regional High School in Little Egg Harbor.
“I’m going there tomorrow and we’ll be making pancakes and putting the syrup from sap from local trees on them,” Sommers said. “We’ll be going out and looking at trees.”
“We have USDA grants, the first of which was about tapping red maples. Canada and New England use Sugar Maples. When I first heard about the grant I had just retired and I thought ‘you can’t make syrup from these trees they aren’t sugar maples so it turns out I was wrong,’” she said.
She wore crimson leaf earrings that were a gift from a former student who now works with her on the maple project. “It is nice to be able to keep nurturing the students that I had. We have a new grant for partnering with a Vermont company and they are going to do (maple) blends that will give us more product that we will be able to sell. We just started selling about a year ago. The partnership will expand Vermont’s footprint as a brand in south Jersey.”
OCSCD staffer Jessica Pinto ran a workshop that included a field activity concerning various soils of the area. “We do our best to work with engineers, contractors and the community to educate as well as regulate.” Events like this is part of the education portion of the department.
The subject of her workshop was the physical properties of soil. She told the educators who were in the workshop that “there are so many ways to spin your discussion. I have young children so I find it fun to get into some of the little kid stuff as well as material for older children and even adults,” Pinto added.
“What I want you to take away from this is when you discuss soil with anyone and you are trying to advocate for conservation and natural resources, I think it is really vital that people get outside and that they use their hands and their senses. I think the memories are strongest and the lessons sit with us longer if we can actually engage our senses while we are learning and the physical properties of soil,” she told the educators.
