Are you looking for an opportunity to gain education experience, lead field and classroom-based lessons, and engage hundreds of local students in watershed-focused programming? Consider applying to become South Sound GREEN’s new Education Intern! This position is ideal for college students or recent graduates looking to gain real world experience with environmental education, and the Intern will get the opportunity to assist with exciting projects and events such as water quality testing and nearshore field trips!!
Find more information about the position here. The priority application deadline is March 17th. Please reach out to Stephanie Bishop at sbishop@thurstoncd.com if you have any questions.
Stephanie kicks off our Water Quality Teach Training at Brewery Park.
School is back in session and so are we! Our Water Quality Monitoring season is right around the corner and we’ve been busy getting ready for our favorite time of the year. That includes professional development events for teachers, like our latest Water Quality Training at Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls! 24 teachers from South Sound GREEN, the Nisqually River Education Project, and the Chehalis Basin Education Consortium programs all came out for the day to get a refresher or learn our water quality procedures for the first time. We want to make sure local students have a great experience when water quality testing, and that starts with having confident teachers! Thank you to all of those who came out and participated for the day!
We’re thrilled to have field-based water quality testing days return, and will continue to provide support throughout the coming month. If you want to learn more about water quality monitoring, send an email to snadell@thurstoncd.com or come talk to us at the upcoming Harvest Festival and Orca Recovery Day!
A huge thank you to all of our community partners for your help with making our 2022 Student GREEN Congress so successful!
Student GREEN Congress has come and gone once again! Our 29th annual and second ever virtual Student GREEN Congress event was an amazing success, engaging over 700 students across multiple watershed programs in South Puget Sound and beyond. Alongside the Nisqually River Education Project, the Chehalis Basin Education Consortium, and numerous incredible community partners, we coordinated a virtual Congress event that included an interactive Water Quality Story Map and hands-on environmental workshops. And to top it all off, our Congress Keynote event featured Long Live the Kings presenting and leading their Survive the Sound game, where students learned about tracking juvenile steelhead and modeled steelhead survival rates. Overall, we couldn’t be more proud of how our favorite annual event went, and we hope to return to an in-person event next year!
Outside of Congress, we’ve been busy with water quality field days with Olympia elementary schools and North Thurston middle schools. Getting students outside has always been our priority, even if it’s on their school grounds!
And finally, spring is here! Stay tuned for information about our upcoming Nearshore programs! We’ll need additional volunteer help for a lot of these programs, so if you’re interested in joining us out in some beautiful nearshore environments please reach out to Sam Nadell at snadell@thurstoncd.com!
South Sound GREEN Watershed Educator – Applications Due August 21, 2019 at 4:30 pm
Thurston Conservation District’s South Sound GREEN Program seeks a driven, creative educator with a passion for the natural world to support local teachers and students in water quality monitoring, habitat restoration and creating community connections leading to watershed protection. The South Sound GREEN Watershed Educator will serve in a well-established, place-based environmental education program housed at Thurston Conservation District. Through water quality sampling and data analysis, the Watershed Educator will split time between the classroom and field sites, often working outdoors at local Puget Sound beaches, marinas, wetlands, creeks, lakes and other outdoor learning environments. The Watershed Educator will engage students through water quality monitoring, nearshore experiences, restoration and other service learning projects, and through the Annual Student GREEN Congress where students will present and analyze data on more than 50 monitoring sites. They will assist teachers by increasing their skills and confidence with watershed education and assisting with teacher professional development opportunities.
Overall, 857 students visited Puget Sound as part of the CLAMSS program! South Sound GREEN staff coordinated with community partners to serve as station leaders including Pacific Shellfish Institute and beach naturalists from the Puget Sound Estuarium, and recruited and trained volunteer divers, biologists and community members interested in helping out. South Sound GREEN staff led a stations on water quality impacts on Puget Sound (utilizing the Enviroscape model as a tool to identify non-point source pollution impacts and ways kids can change their behavior to improve water quality), and on OA impacts to crab survival which included a quadrat study of the beach.
Overall, SSG volunteers contributed 136.5 volunteer hours for these trips! In addition, 82 volunteer chaperones attending with the schools contributed 323 volunteer hours for a combined 479.5 volunteer hours! Special thanks to NOAA’s B-WET Education Program for funding this program!
