Bianca Cassouto, education program manager with the Everglades Foundation, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about the organization.
The Everglades Foundation has the Everglades Literacy Program.
Cassouto said, “The Everglades Literacy Program is the education pillar of the Everglades Foundation and this program was established more than 10 years ago at the request of our board of directors, who realized that in order to make sure that Floridians understood the importance of the Everglades and can advocate for it. We needed more people to be educated about it, and so the Everglades Literacy Program was established to provide classroom teachers and educators with the tools and the knowledge to become Everglades literate. In this sense, literate means just understanding the value of the ecosystem and being able to educate the dozens of students that they work with each year to help minimize those generations of students who didn’t know much about the Everglades and that so much has changed in the last decade, and we’re very proud of that impact.”
How important is the literacy program?
Cassouto said, “The importance of the program touches on big things all the way to small things. So Florida is now the third most populous state, which means that there are many of us living within the Everglades watershed and getting our drinking water from there. Again, that’s millions of us getting our drinking water from the same place, including everyone down in the Keys and the countless tourists that come and visit Florida. We have unique wildlife here, our wetlands, our economy is tied to a healthy and clean Everglades, and so by having an informed citizenry, you can make sure that they are making the best decisions to help protect this unique but fragile, yet resilient ecosystem that is the Everglades itself and it’s place-based learning. While it’s important to learn about different places around the world, it’s also incredibly important to learn about your own backyard, and that’s what our students and our teachers are doing in the classroom through our programming that we offer.”
What does the program cost?
Cassouto said, “Everything that we offer is absolutely free of cost to teachers and students. Our team at the foundation works incredibly hard to minimize any barriers that teachers might have to bring this exciting and new curriculum to the classroom. We have eight dedicated staff members across the state of Florida, who work with teachers, hands-on and directly to help bring the program into the classroom as well. So to summarize, it’s absolutely free and available to anyone to access online, on our website.”
The program is in its 10th anniversary.
Cassouto said, “When we first started, there was an incredible gap of both teachers and students not really teaching about the Everglades, or not fully understanding the importance and the value of the ecosystem and through our Everglades Literacy teacher trainings, which are free professional development, we offer to teachers, we spend a couple hours with them and go through an Everglades 101. We talk to them about the importance of the ecological value changes to the watershed. Of course, we touch on the comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan, which is the largest restoration plan in the world, happening here in our backyard, tackling the issues of restoring the Everglades ecosystem. So teachers leave our trainings feeling empowered, educated, and we proudly present every teacher who attends one of our trainings a bag of free printed lessons and materials for them to bring back to the classroom, meaning they can start teaching about the Everglades the next day, because we prep them and equip them with what they need, and because these teachers have these tools and these skills, it reflects in the students. So students are learning about the Everglades starting in pre K all the way through high school, and you can imagine the impact it can have when you’re learning about something through your entire education, and then you stay in Florida, you become a voter, a homeowner, and you start working, and you carry that knowledge with you to help make those decisions to protect the ecosystem. So we’ve seen a lot of great work from our students, our teachers and our communities just by being more Everglades literate, and we’d like to think that the program has contributed to that as well.”
Are schools in Monroe County participating in the literacy program?
Cassouto said, “I’m so happy to share that we have a really strong presence in Monroe County. So to date, we’ve worked with more than 145 teachers from different schools spanning the Upper Keys all the way down to Key West. We work with public schools, charter schools, private schools, and we work very closely with the school district, who supports and implements our programs and shares them with teachers across the school district. So we couldn’t do it without those partnerships.”
What is an Everglades champion school?
Cassouto explained, “For many years, we traveled up and down the state of Florida, training teachers, giving them that Everglades 101, and we had so many teachers come back to us and say, I love the training, I love the curriculum. What else can I do? That led to the creation of this designation program called Everglades champion schools, which is all about schools that make Everglades part of their school culture. So that means getting their teachers trained, attending our professional development, going on Everglades field experiences, creating interdisciplinary projects all about the Everglades, having student ambassadors talking about Everglades on the morning announcements, creating projects, newsletters, community events. It’s a lot of what schools are already doing and aligning it to Everglades efforts. All of that earns schools Everglades champion schools designation, either bronze, silver or gold. It’s been a tremendous program that has continued to grow each and every year, including in Monroe, actually. I would really like the opportunity to shout out our two Everglades champion schools that we’re working with this year because of the amazing work they’re doing in the Keys and in the greater Monroe Community. Firstly, that would be Ocean Studies Charter School, which has been participating in both our K5 and 6-12 Everglades champion schools. They’ve been working with us for five years, so they’re being recognized with their five year milestone, as well as Key Largo School, which is in their fourth year working in the program and they’ve received Gold Level status for the last three years based on all of their projects that they’re doing Everglades related, those teachers are amazing. They’re really changing the landscape of making sure those students are Everglades educated and getting them out into the ecosystem, because it’s amazing to learn about it in the classroom, but then going out and experiencing it is a whole other opportunity to connect what you learn in the classroom to real world experience, and again, feeling very fortunate that this is our backyard, and the more we learn about it, the better we can help protect it. So we’re very thankful for all of our schools and all of our champion schools that we work with.”
For more information, click here: https://www.evergladesfoundation.org/