April marks the start of spring, Arbor Day, Earth Day and Environmental Education month.  Maryland’s environmental education programming helps students learn to act in ways that create and maintain an optimal relationship with the environment, as well as protect the unique natural resources of Maryland, particularly the Chesapeake Bay and its watershed.  Environmental education aims to increase public awareness, concern, and knowledge about environmental issues and provide the skills needed to make responsible decisions about the environment in all its complexity.

Across the state, students engage in a variety of environmental service and learning opportunities in the classroom, or through outdoor learning facilities.  Maryland’s students are involved in planting riparian buffers, monitoring local water quality, working with environmental mapping projects, and raising and releasing a wide variety of native species.

Two year old horseshoe crabs
raised in Maryland classrooms.

Popular ongoing environmental education programs sponsored by DNR include “Bay Grasses in Classes” and “Horseshoe Crabs in the Classroom,” which offer students hands-on learning opportunities to raise these species in their classroom and participate in their restoration.  “Eyes on the Bay” incorporates real-time data on the conditions of the Chesapeake Bay into water quality lessons.

Environmental education in Maryland works to instill a personal sense of environmental stewardship in an entire generation with the ultimate goal of a healthier Bay and natural world.

- Elena Takaki, Education Coordinator
Maryland Department of Natural Resources

- Rebecca Bell, Environmental Education Specialist
Maryland State Department of Education
 

For more information:

http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/MSDE/programs/environment/

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