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This video will showcase the six Informal Science Learning Centers (ISLCs) who have created a community of practice for this project to share best practices, resources and knowledge around working with youth in civic engagement. The ISLCs come from different parts of the country and can highlight specific stumbling blocks and successes on working with youth to be more civically engaged. An accompanying toolkit will be available later this year.
Liz Georgakopoulos
Teen Programs Supervisor
Hello! We're excited to hear from you about our IMLS funded project. Please leave a comment here with questions and input.
Thanks!
Liz Georgakopoulos
Folashade Solomon
Senior Researcher
What a wonderful list of collaborators. You mentioned that you developed a community of practice. Did you create a community of practice among the collaborators, or your students, or both? The students report that they learned a lot from their experiences. How many students were engaged in the project? What activities and approaches did you use with them and what experiences did the student have that led to these outcomes?
Kimberly Elliott
Liz Georgakopoulos
Teen Programs Supervisor
The Community of Practice formed is specifically for the adults and professional development for those teaching the civic engagement. We are currently in year 3 of the grant so we don't have final numbers yet on teens that have benefited from this CoP formation. And, as you can imagine, COVID has certainly impacted our staffing, number of teens, and even programs being offered. In our toolkit that will be available this fall, each program will be summarized in a two page document because they are all so unique. We will share best practices and activities that have been successful in our programs so they can be replicated in many different settings. The toolkit will be hosted at www.neaq.org
Shane Woods
Folashade Solomon
Kimberly Elliott
Kathryn (Katie) Boyd
Kathryn (Katie) Boyd
This seems like a great project - it's so important to get youth involved, especially around climate and environmental topics! The description mentions a community of practice that supports the work, but the video didn't describe how the organizations engage with that community. Could you please provide some more details about how these organizations engage with and support each other in this work? I'd also be interested to know a few ideas that may be shared in the civic engagement toolkit that you are developing. Thanks! Keep up the great work.
Meghan Marrero
Jamie Bell
Project Director
I'd also like to know more about how this unique set of partners came together around a common vision. Were there challenges in thresholding the concept of civic engagement with the youth at the different sites?
Jen Kretser
Director of Climate Initiatives
Thanks Katie and Jamie for your comments and questions. The original idea for the grant came through conversations at a climate change summit in Utah a number of years ago, exploring the role of youth in our institutions and as changemakers. We wanted to have broad geographic partners that all had strong youth program with committed staff. Building on Liz's comment above, our community of practice is made up of staff from each of the organizations. We have been meeting once a month on zoom pretty consistently over the last 2 1/2 years and have gotten together in person twice (at NeAQ and at MOTE Marine Lab). We worked hard to create a culture of sharing and learning at every meeting. Our leadership team - NeAQ, The Wild Center and the Alliance for Climate Education co-create the agendas, have shared facilitation and leadership responsibilities. We generated topics we wanted to learn more about such as: civic engagement and advocacy, teaching climate justice, positive youth development etc and shared vocabulary so we had a common starting point. Last year, COVID was certainly a challenge as was the moral reckoning on racial and social justice - we created a space to talk about what was happening at our institutions and in our lives. The distributed leadership, co-generated and collaborative meetings, problem solving approach and co created content generation, recognizing our unique organizations and finding the strengths each brought to the project, relatively consistent meetings each month over the last 2.5 years have all contributed to creating this community of practice.
In terms of civic engagement - we had A LOT of conversations and discussion around what that means and where our programs/institutions were on that continuum. One great resource that helped us find common ground/definitions was reaching out to CIRCLE - a program at Tufts College of Civic Life that has a lot of expertise on youth civic engagement and the environment.
Kathryn (Katie) Boyd
Liz Georgakopoulos
Meghan Marrero
Jamie Bell
Project Director
Thank you, Jen. Sounds like a really organic, authentic coming together of partners who have shared values and goals, and that you all have been thoughtful about level-setting and leveraging synergies. And thank you for the referral to CIRCLE, which is clearly an evidence-based program that I did not previously know about. All best as the project progresses!
Meghan Marrero
Awesome work. I love projects that involve true collaboration across contexts--it is so important to learn from one another and grow together.
Liz Georgakopoulos
Jen Kretser
Candice Woods
What a great project! Did you use a certain DEIA framework to adapt tools and resources to fit the needs of your diverse audiences across the different sites?
Shane Woods
Patti Parson
Wonderful to see a collaboration among so many museums that have so much to offer. Looking forward to seeing what you can accomplish once we move past pandemic!
Liz Georgakopoulos
Shane Woods
Senior Director, STEM Center of Excellence
The UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development are a great connection for youth to see the impact that can be made if we all work together to build a better future. Are you looking to scale the project to include new partners? What are your plans for sharing the blueprint for others to replicate?
Liz Georgakopoulos
Teen Programs Supervisor
Shane,
For year 3, which we are currently in, the plan had been to add in 6 additional partners in order to scale up. With the pandemic we had to change our direction and focus more on developing the toolkit. We are currently in discussions about what it might look like to continue this CoP and add in additional partners.
Laura Santhanam
Such a fun project! It is wonderful to see experts in so many parts of the country working together to think about ways to improve how children and young people connect with what museums have to offer! Thank you for this important work!!
Liz Georgakopoulos
Jacqueline Genovesi
Very interesting project. I'm wondering when the tool kit you discuss will be available for others?
Liz Georgakopoulos
Teen Programs Supervisor
It should be available in September, or October at the latest and will be hosted at www.neaq.org
James Callahan
Thank you for the wonderful video and the essential work you are doing!
The work of the Wild Center! is incredible in leading the development of youth summits on climate change.
We can testify how valuable such Youth Summits are. There are several annual events we have taken part in for years, specifically those in California and Washington DC. Youth for Environmental Sustainability (YES) Conference, Environmental Youth Forum (San Rafael and Berkeley) and Anacostia Environmental Youth Summit in Washington DC. [Several appear in our video this year]
That you encourage summits connecting with each other and learning from each other makes such a positive difference. So many great things take place in different regions of the country.
Question: Does it look like youth summits in the years ahead will be hybrid -- both in person and remote?
Liz Georgakopoulos
Jen Kretser
Director of Climate Initiatives
Hi Jim. Thanks so much for your comments. I do think in the future that youth climate summits will be hybrid. Right now, we have seen the engagement in all virtual summits declining a bit due to just overall digital/zoom fatigue. However the power of being able to convene remotely is definitely been realized so I think we will see some very creative iterations of the youth climate summit model.
Natalie Stapert
I love your approach to building civic engagement by forming communities. The strong relationships between and team-building between staff at the different museums seem critical to impacting young people and promoting their civic engagement. Would ever consider inviting school teachers to join your team? It would be great to learn from your expertise in informal science learning while bringing classroom experience and many student connections to the work. If you are interested in connecting with middle and high school teachers and students, I would be thrilled to work with you!
Liz Georgakopoulos
Liz Georgakopoulos
Teen Programs Supervisor
We will keep that in mind! No official plans along these lines aside from releasing the toolkit for use in the fall.