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Learning Outside: Education for Clean Water: Chesapeake Bay Foundation · Clean Water Conversations

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Season 5 of Cleanwater Conversations is sponsored by RKK.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: RKK is a full-service design and engineering firm that provides innovative solutions to complex challenges.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: As a recognized leader in state and municipal stormwater management, MS4 permit compliance, stream restoration, and ecological design services, RKK is ready to deliver community-focused water quality improvements to urban and suburban communities.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Check out more information about RK at rkk.com.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, RKK.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And now onto our show.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, from your two favorite redheads celebrating the luck of the Irish.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you guys ever when you were growing up, did you do anything special for St.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Patrick's Day?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_03: My grandma's birthday was St.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: Patrick's Day.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: So we always had she embraced the four-leaf clover cake or whatever way to wear green and sell.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's nice.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's we no, we didn't really do really don't really do much.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, it's fun.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: The holiday's a win.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's celebrate some of our success stories.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of wins.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, middle of March has lots of things to celebrate, but I know that everybody's eager for that planting season to start.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_03: Or we feel like we've made it through winter, but not quite Mother Nature.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_03: And our projects feel that too.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're looking forward to summer because the communications action team has decided to support and hype up Water Week, which is coming up.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's coming up June 5th through the 13th.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the cool thing is this year, in addition to the River of the Year win for Conestoga.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is also the 10th anniversary of Water Week.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot to build up, a lot of storytelling.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not to mention the Bicusqua Centennial, the 250th anniversary of this country.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So there you go.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot to celebrate, that's for sure.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: There is.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what is your success story?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, my win for the week for recently.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_03: Um, one of them is a really wonderful visit with team members from the Environmental Protection Agency or the EPA.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_03: And from the Chesapeake Bay program and from state agencies like the Department of Environmental Protection or You just dodged so many buzzers there.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_03: I'm making them available now for the rest of the podcast.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, there was this wonderful group of partners from a state and federal level who came to visit Lancaster recently.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_03: And we got to show off a lot of the collaborative nature of how we work, talk about specific projects like the Blue Green Connector, but also the important role of agriculture, the way that we all use the countywide action plan or the CAP.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, a win recently was having EPA come visit for one of the good kind.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Good kind of visits.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of success stories now that they are starting to see.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what we do.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Tell these cool stories.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Amplifying that message.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then speaking of telling cool stories, our guest today is Tom Ackerman.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: He is the vice president of education at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation or CBF.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: That one's now available.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Check it out.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, always good to talk to you and excited for your expertise in this season's theme of education.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like we I when we decided on this, I was like, we have to go to Tom.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: Happy to do it.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: We're just at about the start of your season.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Two weeks.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll get going on March 17th, basically.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: 17th, 18th, depending on the program.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, St.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Patrick's Day.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: When the Ospreys come back to the Bay Watershed.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: I just saw a post from Jay Fleming.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_03: He said he saw one.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, spring is not far.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: They they come in.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: The early osprey spotters will catch a few.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: We'll still say it's St.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Patrick's Day.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's easy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start off with an icebreaker.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And your icebreaker is when you were bored as a kid, where would your imagination take you?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: When I was bored as a kid, where would my imagination take me?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Probably into history when I was a kid, like thinking about like what would I do if I were in whatever spot?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: How could I stop the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Something along those lines.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, definitely had a like a bent towards sci-fi and time travels.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_03: Nice.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_03: I like that answer.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_03: Would you be that imaginative, like wandering around outside, or were you hiding in a fort you made in the living room or something?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well, to that part of the question, I was never bored when I was outside.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where I was spending a lot of a lot of our time.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we would we would go out.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: My neighborhood actually backed up to Gunpowder State Park.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so we were always roving around the streams, building forts, building bike tracks, catching bugs, playing in the streams, all that stuff until mom yelled from the back porch that it was dinner time or the sun went down, and then we'd come come back inside.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: You just showed your generation right there.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, for sure.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's it, that's a perfect tie-in to the next question.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's an early memory that ties you to conservation?
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: It was getting outside.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I grew up in Hartford County, which is Caddy Corner across the Susquehanna River from Lancaster County.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, spent a lot of time outdoors, out in the woods, out in the streams, and that certainly was a big part of it.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Used to go up to Muddy Run Park up there when I was a kid sometimes.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So spending time out there and then spending time on the Chesapeake Bay fishing and down on the coastal bays was definitely a a big part of it.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then I don't know how much you know again, I'll probably tip my generation here, but my my mom always had is watching National Geographic and Wild America and all that stuff.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: So uh that definitely was kind of like the the roots of my of my conservation ethic.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: But I think being from the mid-Atlantic, we we we definitely value our water and having that direct experience.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I would actually pop in the theme song for for National Geographic if I wouldn't get sued for that.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a National Geographic explorer, so similarly, and this is this is like my favorite new question.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, new, I mean, it's been going on for a little bit now, but what did you want to be when you grew up?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well uh yeah, so when I grew up, I think I my my earliest memory of like thinking about what I would do as a job or whatever, I wanted to be a a toy designer, like a toy engineer for Hasbro.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: This is an amazing answer.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think the the theme of this episode of your podcast is is gonna be Gen X.
• 7:22
  unknown: There you go.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: But like I definitely when we had like physical toys, like I wanted to be one of the people that invented whatever the next thing was, and you know.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: So then how did you get from that to classroom teaching?
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's many steps past that, but your time as a teacher.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I kind of like that.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of like I wanted to design things, and I thought about engineering, I thought about architecture, and then I went to school.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: The one thing I knew I was not gonna be was a teacher because I come from a family of teachers.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's not for me, never gonna happen, not doing it.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I got into it, started, I was in engineering for one semester at college and had looked ahead at my course schedule, and it was like all math and some physics.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I was like, that's great, and like no electives.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I actually want to take like a lot more courses, so I need to think about a different major.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: I thought my father was gonna be like, stick it out, see, see where this takes you, you know.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: But he was an educator, a teacher and a principal.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, no, if you think you might want to change, do it now so you don't waste any time.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Thought about where my interests were, and I thought about the environment because I'd actually been on a pretty impactful experience as a high schooler with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_03: No way.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh where Allison worked at one point.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, you know, this with that with the other parts of my environmental ethic, I was like, let's let's learn about the environment, let's let's get into this, let's figure out how to protect it.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I so I got a degree in environmental science and biology, and I was looking out at what I could really do to help after I graduated undergrad, and it was like, well, you know, you could be a teacher and teach other people how important this stuff is.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, so that that's what I ended up doing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I was uh as Allison mentioned, I was a classroom teacher at the middle of high school level for seven years across the river from you all in Maryland.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: Huh.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_03: I did not realize that was quite so full circle as that.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But oh yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then I became as a as a teacher, I worked with CBF to do restoration projects and I taught the CBF curricula and really fell in love with teaching about the environment and teaching outdoors, uh, which eventually led me back to work at CBF.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, full circle.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, as the vice president of education for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, give us a scoop about uh CBF's education programs.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's some pretty impressive stuff going on there.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the Bay Foundation is a is a an organization that has a very broad portfolio, but we can shrink it all down to you know our very simple mission statement or catchphrase, which is save the bay.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very, very appreciative that the Bay Foundation for over 50 years has recognized that a big part of saving the Bay and its rivers and streams is about engaging students, about teaching the next generation, their connection to the water, why it's important, why it's valuable.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we do that through a very specific and powerful way that's a little bit difficult, but you know, we recognize that it's not just learning the facts and figures, all the names of the rivers and streams that lead into the bay, et cetera, et cetera, or the nitrogen cycle.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah that it's really important that students actually get out there and experience those rivers and streams, experience the bay, study the watershed out in the field.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: They have to experience it to care about it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that that kind of goes back into our philosophy of learning and teaching.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we know our outcome has to be more than just the cognitive piece of the knowledge.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: They've got to care about it.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's got to be that that connection.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then we hope that we, through our partnerships with teachers, that we can get students the opportunity to actually take action in their own communities to make a difference, to protect the environment or improve it.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of our our philosophical approach to all this.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so we do that by getting kids out on the rivers and streams, out on the bay.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: We have five canoe programs across the watershed, uh, including our program in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Rivers and Streams program.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: We have 11 vessels, including two new electric vessels that are going to be coming online this upcoming year.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's so exciting.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Very excited about.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of a whole new frontier.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, think about your electric diesel buses or your Teslas and what they what they've done for ground transportation.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to break some of that new ground in the maritime industry.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: So very excited about that.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And we have four island centers, as Allison knows, being a former island center educator.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, shout out to Smith Island, Tylerton.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Woohoo! Indeed, indeed.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And those are incredibly uh unique opportunities for students to get out into some of the wildest areas that we have on the East Coast and experience the Bay firsthand.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that's that's what we've been doing for the last 50 years.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been fortunate to work with lots of great partners and lots of amazing school districts to get almost a million and a half students out.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just our student program.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we also run a very robust teacher training program where teachers can earn graduate credits or continuing professional development credits to learn how to teach outside.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we work with student leaders, and then we take all this, all these amazing resources and are fantastic educators, and we help educate the general public and decision makers and uh important community leaders like Lancaster County Farmers.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_03: Pretty incredible.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: Tom, is it still true that the CBF Education Department is the largest environmental education program in the country?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're one I always say one of the largest.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's fair to say, you know, if you're like probably one of the five or six largest, one of the largest, one of the oldest, and one of the most impactful programs in environmental education.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: And how many staff are there in the education department?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got 52 folks in the education uh department.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: 35 of them are field-based educators.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have a a team that works specifically on student leadership, which is helping those students really get active in advocating for policies that help the environment as well as educating their communities and doing restoration projects.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we have a whole team that works on teacher professional development as well.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's amazing that impact.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you said that you reach so many different types of audiences through education, and that's the avenue to kind of get there.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: But it really is a diverse audience that you work with directly.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: We think of us here at the Lancaster Cleanwater Partners, our audience is our partner organizations.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: You guys have multiple audiences that you have to kind of customize to.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_03: So how do you get the right kind of content?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: But educating a staff person is really different than educating a fourth grader.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: So sure.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: It goes back to, you know, we we pride ourselves on being good educators and and being up to date on what we call pedagogy, that is the you know, the science of teaching, the science and the art of teaching.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's where if if you if you start from that approach, if you start from a focus of of inquiry-based instruction, which is really like questioning, like using your audience's questions to really shape the ex the learning experience and to and to be your your learning objective, then you're always going to be, you know, what we might call student focused or audience focused.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's that's what we strive to train our educators to do and how we work with school districts to develop curricula, and that's kind of a best practice in science education.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, when you use that approach, you're you're automatically differentiating the instruction and the level, the experience based on your on your audience's background and their their prior knowledge.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: That that's kind of baked into our system.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, certainly if we're taking a group of base scientists out to Smith Island, you know, that's that's a that's a different level and a different approach than you know, working with a group of fourth graders on the Conestoga River.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it still comes to the following their their curiosity, following their you know, what's getting them interested, making connections for them.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the learning is really happening on their side of the fence, on the learner's side of the fence.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: People look at teaching and and education and they kind of like think of it as a lecture, uh, but that's actually one of the least effective ways usually to transmit knowledge or ideas, is and especially we have the advantage of working outside.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Our department tagline is learn outside.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's it's so engaging.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: Your participants, whether they're seven or seventy, they're they're excited generally to be outside, to have a new experience, and it actually turns your brain on in it in a way that makes you receptive to learning.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you're co-creating that that learning, it's something that'll stick with you for a lifetime.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's my pedagogical answer to you.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_03: So wonderful.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_03: Very nice.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: I'm having like all these throwbacks in my head, and my heart is warmed from all of this, that is just so, so powerful.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious how you would describe that CBF ties their education work to clean water in Pennsylvania.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_03: Because, like you said, learn outside plus save the bay.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_03: There's all these things that CBF gets to focus on.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_03: So, yeah, give us a little bit of detail about how that is tied to clean water in Pennsylvania.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, as as I'm sure you and probably a large part of your audience know that, you know, Lancaster County is is one of the epicenters of pollution in the watershed because of all of our small farms that are heavily involved in animal agriculture.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I live in central Maryland now, and I happen to know because of my education that a lot of my dairy products come from Lancaster County.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we don't do a lot of dairy down here.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and so part of what I think about the connecting people and educating people about how they affect their local waterways.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, we're we're also focused on the social systems.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I have a well, I have a sticker on a very old water bottle.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's no farms, no food.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have a sticker on a new new water bottle that says farms work wonders, because you know, we would much rather see land in the hands of educated landowners like farmers who understand how this stuff works and are supported by the broader community and government to take the actions that they need to do to protect their local streams and creeks and rivers and eventually help out the water quality down the bay.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's you know, that's what education is.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's helping people understand those connections, see those connections, discover those connections, and then hopefully take actions as consumers, as landowners, as voters to make decisions that make sense.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's terrible to think that a lot of people are not connected to their local environment.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's similarly terrible to think that a lot of our students don't understand where their food really comes from.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, for them, it comes from the grocery store.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so we actually take that on as part of our education mission to make sure that kids understand these connections, these social systems, human needs, how they interact with the local environment.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's, you know, honestly, it's up to them to make decisions about how they're going to use that information.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: We see the whole process and the whole mission as being very connected.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: We want to definitely work with our partners in Lancaster County to achieve our education mission because we see that as integral to the mission to save the bay and to keep it safe because future generations are aware of how their actions as individuals and as communities affect their local environment and the regional environment as well.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, thank you for those details because I think it's so important the way CBF focuses on giving people information where they are, meeting that audience, like you said, where they are in their own education process, but for always giving them a pathway to get to action.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's an article that we've read recently here called Stop Raising Awareness Already.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: And it's and it's because if you don't have an awareness campaign or a communications tool without an action piece, you're not giving them enough.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: They have to have that way to do something about what they've learned.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: And so I just appreciate and always have the way that CBF's education department guides people to that by giving them all the information and letting it up to them to decide because their experience is their own.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: So it's it's such a cool way that you do that with local communities in Pennsylvania and in Lancaster with the real information, including their consumer power.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: We hope to.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: We certainly hope to.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, awareness is just the first step.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that actually models what good learning science says, too.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's all these progressions and it's a high bar, you know, to to get to.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's it'd be much easier just to teach people to recite the the 25 major tributaries that call it a day.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: So true.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: We really want to get them to actually doing something, carrying them out and doing something.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Get them out to those local tributaries.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: That seems to be what the best thing to do is.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: That that is our strategy, and that that is what has an impact.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you'll, you know, I go around when I'm giving talks or or doing a presentation.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the one of my favorite first questions is to ask people to think about think about a meaningful educational experience, something you did in school that you remember all these years later, you if I'm talking to an adult audience.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then I say without asking them what the experience was, I'll say, raise your hands if that experience, that education experience happened outside.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: And invariably for like half the people or more, their hands go up for outside.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you think about it, that's probably like one tenth of one percent of all the activities that they did in their kids and 12 career.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, Tom, and all of that work and all those different kinds of people, what does that leadership role look like for you in this incredible organization, kind of on a daily basis?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: Because there's seasons to some of this and like you said, different audiences.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, what yeah, what does that leadership role look like for you?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you're talking internally to CBF, I'm super fortunate to work with an amazing team of people in the education department who are just absolutely so passionate about what they do, so receptive to being learners themselves, which I think is important for us, all of us as an individual and as an organization, just being committed to learning and open to new information makes us better partners and more effective at what we do.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, my my job is my job is so easy that way.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in terms of the other pieces of it, I think you know, external.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Internally, there's there's a lot of common sense and and people when you when you talk about environmental education, people are like, yes, you know, we should definitely do more of that, especially in the face of some of the ways that our society and our communities are changing and the actual market and measurable reduction and opportunities to get outside for kids.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when it comes around to the are we gonna put money towards this, are we gonna fund this as a community or as a state or as a as a country?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's where things get uh get tougher.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm always out there trying to make the case and and advocate for additional supports for this work.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that's both obviously in the in the funding realm, but also making sure that state governments are are committing resources to coordinating efforts and and disseminating good information, that our departments of education are highlighting environmental education and and prioritizing it so that it actually gets taught in schools, and that our local school systems have the resources that they need and aren't kind of just leaving this to the it's a nice to have, not a not a need to have.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when I think about the world that our today's students are going to be walking into, you know, the one of the phrases you'll hear a lot is every job is a green job, or the this fact that sustainability is going to be a huge driver of you know job opportunities in the future, and also, you know, just something that we we really need to integrate a lot more holistically across the whole economy and and and government space as we deal with some of these really large picture environmental challenges.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've worked all the way from the classroom level up to national coalitions.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you see the base benefits from environmental policy goals and what students actually experience on a day-to-day basis in schools?
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's kind of connected to what we were what we were just talking about.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody, when they say like, hey, oh, hey, we should learn more outside, you know, we should get kids outside to learn.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's people like that makes complete sense.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's you know, if you just walk outside onto your schoolyard, you can you can learn so much more authentically and it's so much more engaging for students.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Even outside of environmental science.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen teachers do amazing things with math and art and literature just out on their school grounds or in their local nearby nature.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's that's fairly obvious.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: The rubber kind of hits the road when we get to, you know, do we put it into our curriculum standards?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do we resource it and fund it?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Do we provide teachers with professional development?
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which is a huge roadblock because teachers aren't aren't trained how to how to go outside their buildings.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: They're only trained for the most part as part of their teacher preparation to teach inside a classroom.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And when you think about that, particularly as a science teacher, it's, you know, from my from my perspective, that's criminal.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: You're missing half of what you could be doing.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so I I think about in terms of policy, you know, I think about in Pennsylvania, our our recent adoption of the science, technology, engineering, environmental literacy, and sustainability standards.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, STEAL standards.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, which is a fantastic acronym for Pennsylvania.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the story behind this was that Pennsylvania was revising their science standards, which happens in each state usually every eight to ten years or so.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: It had actually been 20 years since Pennsylvania revised their standards.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a committee put together to upgrade these things, you know, as science changes fairly rapidly.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a regular need and to incorporate, you know, the best practices in science teaching as well.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: So a committee came forth, pulled all these things together from across many perspectives, uh, professional educators.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that they did was at the high school level, they decided that as they reorganized, it really wasn't important to have what we used to call our ecology and environment standards.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: They would still be sprinkled in there, but they wouldn't have their own section.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we we saw that and said, well, that's problematic if you don't have these standards represented at the highest organizational level.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of teachers are going to find themselves at the end of the year without enough time to teach it and just leave it off the curriculum.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Right, exactly.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, along with the Pennsylvania Environmental Education Association and several other partners, sort of organized around this, utilized the comment period, sat on committees, and got the word out that this was actually highly problematic and that we wanted, you know, the committee eventually to actually include these things and in its own, what they call domain.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there were about 2,200 comments on all the Pennsylvania science standards, from everything from physics to computer science.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And based on our advocacy work with all of our Pennsylvania partners, about 1,600 of those comments were that you need to incorporate environment and ecology at the highest organizational level on all high school and and and elementary.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually the committee, we didn't come up with steels.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was the committee that saw all those things, agreed with us, restored environment ecology and agricultural science as well to that highest level of standard, and changed the name to the steel standards, which is a pretty amazing outcome for that.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: We at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, then we go to the neighboring states and we say, Hey, look at what the great work that Pennsylvania is.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Pennsylvania did it.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_03: Wow, congratulations on that.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, being able to work with your team and the intermediate unit here, knowing that how important that is and how it can show up for teachers locally, that they have that backing, they have that support, but they have resources like the environmental education program to get them outside.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Bay Foundation, along with many of our partners, including many Lancaster partners, we we we recognize that you know it's not just enough to slap a name on something or you know, create a policy that says, you know, thou shalt immediately get into the process of supporting our school systems in implementation.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so we use some federal funding and some private funding to create something called the Outdoor Learning Network Initiative that was specifically organized around trying to help districts, small school districts like many of our 501 school districts across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, um, who don't have the resources to write grants.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if they brought the interest and the commitment of teachers to the project, we helped them establish the grants and run the grants and do the training and and work towards implementation as long as they were committed to working with our partners.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the first places we did that was in Lancaster County with Shout out to Sally.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sally Gregory was was one of our key partners and has continued to lead that effort even after the grant ended.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Lancaster County Conservation District, and we had Stroud involved.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: We worked with, I'm trying to remember the school district, so it was Effreda, Columbia Borough, and Conestoga Valley.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think Allison is a is a is a proud alumni of the Mr.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: Hovind just reached out to me about an internship.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: That project actually continues to to produce fruit as you know as as we go forward.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it is you know, it is a challenge, especially in Pennsylvania with all these small school districts that don't necessarily have the the capacity to do this kind of work or to make these adjustments.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's what it's where it's up to us partners to step in and and help out.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: That's pretty incredible.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_03: And when you talk about the work at the regional level or at the state level, even when you're doing curriculum-based work, obviously, as you said, it's different in every state, but there's some initiatives like the No Child Left and Side Coalition, the Maryland Environmental Literacy Network.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, can you tell us a little bit about how CBF's role in those really groundbreaking big-scale projects, what did that look like?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_03: What did that feel like for you all?
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_03: Because you mentioned there's a lot of partners required.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're really focused on on networks, and I'll talk a little bit about that.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, starting with the the no child left inside work, you know, that was federal advocacy that really was just pointed at some of these shortfalls that we saw.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of a for those of you who maybe have followed education policy or or maybe again with the generational tie back.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of the biggest education laws ever passed was the no child left behind law, which had a lot of great, great ambitions and was really looking at at trying to make sure that all learners were able to meet basic standards and really reshaped our education systems in large ways.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, it had a lot of unintended consequences.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: One of those was to really limit science education.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: It almost disappeared from all of our elementary schools and many of our middle schools at the time, which we saw as a big problem.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly, you know, environmental literacy is interdisciplinary, but it spends a lot of time living in science.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we became active.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: We founded the No Child Left Inside Coalition with a with a group of partners who cared about this work and to make sure that students still still had access to environmental education.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually that grew into, I think it was more than 2,500, it was definitely more than 2,200 organizations across the country representing something like 50 million Americans.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Congressman Sarbanes, who was our lead sponsor in the House, believed it to be the largest coalition on any issue in the history of Congress.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember being in the gallery in the House of Representatives when we had our first vote on that, and I think it was 2010.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we got uh 306 votes in the House, and then we were bipartisan sponsored, bipartisanly supported.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Senate didn't end up taking it up that year, but the language made its way into Title II and Title IV of the of the education bill.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and what it really did actually was spark a large movement across the country of states building state environmental literacy plans, um, because that's what would make them eligible for for funding under these items, and to really think systemically about how they can get all their students to be able to graduate environmentally literate and to have these kind of amazing, engaging outdoor experiences.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so eventually something like 43 states developed official state environmental literacy plans of one sort or another, including in Maryland, it actually led to us adopting an environmental literacy graduation requirement for all of our students.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um we try to utilize things like that, certainly within the Bay Watershed in our sort of core states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, as well as West Virginia, Delaware, and New York, and the diff Columbia to try to get folks to pay attention to this and see how good it is for science education, how good it is to develop your students as well-rounded graduates on active members of their community.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's totally inspiring and obviously has made inroads in so many different kinds of places.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: So just a shout out of gratitude for Tom, your leadership and the way that CBF has advocated in those places where it's the right fit and then pushed, pushed, pushed the boundary in some other places where it needs to be, you know?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, we're kind of uh, and I will first of all I'll say there were a lot of partners who supported that effort, obviously, across across the country and who and who took that back to their home states and did amazing things in places like Washington State and Maine and New Mexico.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there's, you know, there's a lot of work being coordinated through the North American Association for Environmental Ed at this point, kind of carrying that stuff forward.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, I I work in a in a unique organization that that does both environmental education and and advocacy at a very high level.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, it's we had the good fortune to be really well connected, both federally and in our our our core states, to make some of this stuff happen.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And some of the strongest voices, I think, for making that happen is is our teachers, our educators.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think they most need right now to confidently talk about or even integrate clean water into an already packed curriculum?
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there there's uh undoubtedly a lot on teachers' plates, a lot that schools were asking schools to achieve these days as they kind of more and more become the center of community, and there's less and less of these, you know, other community organizations that that hold us all together.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: But teachers, yeah, it's it's as I as I mentioned earlier, in most places in this country, when you learn to be a teacher, even a science teacher, no one trains you how to teach outside.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you learn how to run an effective lab, you learn how to guide students to the scientific method, you learn your content, and you learn you know things like classroom management.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's really actually a little bit scary to take a class of students, say seventh graders, outside for learning.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a first-year teacher, I definitely went through the trial by fire of learning how to teach.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that for I'll put that first-year teaching up against just about any other entry experience.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is something that will test you.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I certainly would I had a had this class of students in my sixth period.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: And my, you know, as a new teacher, I came in.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: My my colleagues, when they when they sort of divvied up the schedule, they gave me the most challenging kids at the end of the day.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were like, yeah, you know, it's it it really is just a trial by fire out there.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was making progress here and there with with my other classes, but my my sixth period, you know, I kind of I was walking back down the hallway to my class at the at the end of the day.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: My my principal caught me and he like saw my body language.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, Wow, what's going on?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I said to him, I was like, look, you know, my all my other classes, like I'm you know, I have my good days and my bad days, and but we're getting somewhere with this class.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: They may be actively being harmed by being under my care.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is this is just not going well.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And my my principal was an old phys ed guy, and he said, take them outside.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just take them outside.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, look, if I take these kids outside, half of them are gonna run away over the hill.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then then what are we what are we gonna do?
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: He was like, No, they're not.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, take figure out something, some curricular connection, take them outside, do something outside.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: You just told me they're not learning anything in your class as it is, so try something.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, I had I had students that were seriously emotionally disturbed, you know, ADHD, other special, other, you know, highly special needs, a lot of behavioral issues.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: We went outside and it was it flipped the entire thing.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all of a sudden they were sharing, like, oh, you know, Mr.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Ackerman, did you know there's trails back in those woods?
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know there's you know, so-and-so over here, and you know, oh, my neighborhood's right over all of a sudden they were engaged.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just I just gave them some field glasses and some bird guides, and we're like, we're gonna go see how many birds you find out on the schoolyard today.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: That was the whole lesson plan.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: But that you know, uh the the energy and the engagement really just flipped everything.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I started taking that class outside every Friday because it I mean it was definitely more valuable than anything else we did.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then my other classes got jealous and were like, hey, why did the kids go outside?
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I already knew I wanted to teach about the environment.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, that led me to actually circling back to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, finding a lot of their curriculum materials and starting to lead stream studies and outdoor science investigations, and and I really saw the the power of that engagement.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so when teachers see how excited kids get, they want to be a part of that.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of skill building there.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Confidence building, there's a lot of technique, and there's tons of things that you can do to really make an outdoor investigation successful.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why we invest a lot at CBF, and a lot of our partners invest in teacher professional development.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we we count on our state partners and in Pennsylvania our intermediate unit partners to help promote this kind of professional development and make space for it and prioritize it for for all teachers, which are usually in-service teachers, although there's a couple of good folks doing things around the watershed.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is Millersville University and trying to integrate this into pre-service teaching so that teachers come even before they've taken on a class, they have some some of these skills built in.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_03: That's perfect.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, you have such excitement for this and passion for this from your experiences in the past to what is coming up.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'm curious as we have passed this Bay-related deadline of 2025.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_03: We have a new Bay Agreement, we have excitement with new standards, like you're describing.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_03: What are some of the things that bring you excitement and eagerness as we look to the next 15 years ahead of us?
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_03: Because in Lancaster, we have this shared goal of clean and clear by 2040.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_03: So, what brings you excitement about education and Chesapeake Bay Foundation and students and teachers being part of that?
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I see a lot of really cool organization at the state level and at regional levels and people really seeing the value of this and engaging in it.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have an approach called the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience that we've developed as a whole community here in the mid-Atlantic.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's all about what we talked about at the at the top of our discussion of really taking kids from learning the background information to doing field investigations to making their own conclusions about how that affects their communities and taking action.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that's very rooted in best practices of education and science education, and has been adopted by by all of our Bay Watershed states.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we kind of worked this up like 15 years ago.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: You would have to explain each step of what we if we call it we, and people would look at you like they had no idea what you were talking about.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And now you can go to local school districts across Pennsylvania and Maryland and Virginia, and you can say this to people like, oh yeah, I know what that is.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so true.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that's pretty exciting.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's being written into state standards and local curricula.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Still a lot of work to be done.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think now it, you know, you kind of get deeper and deeper into the implementation, and you know, we really need to work at the local level to support our school districts.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited about the potential to do this in Lancaster County, particularly in a project that we're involved at with the Sunnyside Peninsula and creating a living building challenge that we think will be an amazing environmental campus, and I think will be the heart of an environmental literacy partnership network for Lancaster or potentially Lancaster and Lebanon County, to get every student the opportunity to have really high-end, engaging, amazing experiences outside learning and doing science.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, I totally agree.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's gonna be amazing to be part of that, part of that project and and doing that, like you said, with so many different partner organizations.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and as CBF continues to inspire with Living Building Challenge, everything to curriculum.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think there's you know other things that we're we're excited about, we're excited about trying to help build pathways for green careers, which you know, we also mentioned earlier, I think is going to be a huge need.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: You look at some of the economic reports globally who that's showing that sustainability and environmental challenges are gonna reshape our economy.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: We need to help kids not just learn about this stuff, but potentially be able to turn it into careers.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen a lot of people being very interested in getting behind that and the opportunity to connect high school to community college to workforce preparation, I think is another area where we can do some really cool things, help kids and and prepare ourselves as communities to face the future challenges and hopefully have a cleaner environment.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_03: Have some fun along the way.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that that's given for me.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: If we get outside learning, if we get out out on the river, we're gonna have some fun.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that's definitely and when you're having fun, you you learn more and you learn more, yeah.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, that's that's that's the that's the secret sauce.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is an excellent segue.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of having fun, we have arrived at my favorite part of the show, and that is trivia time.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, okay, all right.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Tom, you noted that you are trying to visit all of the U.S.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: national parks in the lower 48 states.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I put together that is my goal.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I put together this round of national parks trivia for you.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: What was the first national park?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yellowstone?
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is correct.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: There we go.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Nice job.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: What is the largest national park site?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Largest national park is probably gonna be in Alaska.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Is it catmai?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm gonna give it to you.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is Alaska.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's Rangell St.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Elliot National Park in preservation.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Rangel St.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: Elliot.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm I'm just trying to get to the lower forty-eight.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: That part national park, by the way, is uh over eight million acres.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jeez.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's pretty huge.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: What is the smallest national park site?
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: National park site or national parks?
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: National park site.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, national park site, because you many people don't realize national parks include all of our national historic registered places.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna go with Harriet Tubman birthplace.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: Close, very close.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually the Thaddeus Cashuco National Memorial, which is in Philadelphia.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: It is just 0.02 acres of space.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it is on the corner of Third and Pine within walking distance of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: I will have to visit that.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's now on his list.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: There you go.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I was gonna get that one.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: That tribute question.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Come on a podcast, fill up your bucket list.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, why not?
• 45:01
  unknown: Right, right.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Which national park is the furthest south?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: This is not in the lower 48.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's either U.S.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Virgin Islands National Park or in Hawaii.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it is it Manaloa?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's the National Park of American Samoa.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: American Samoa.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's about 2600 miles southwest of the city.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: I've got limited travel funds, so that's why I'm I've I've restricted my my smart goal here to something that's achievable.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: But again, I would love to get to American Samoa.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also I'm also a rugby fan.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there you go.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing, amazing rugby.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Which national park located in Washington State has the most snow?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: The most snow per well, so I probably would go Mount Rainier because it's a fairly small park.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you got it.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: You got it.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: It averaged 640 inches of snow every year between 1920 and and 2011, with a record over a thousand inches over uh during the winter of 71 and 72.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a lot of snow.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of snow.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a big park, but if you go there, make sure you hike both sides.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's on both sides of that mountain.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Which national park has some of the longest and most complex caves in the world?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, there's two major cave parks, and I'm headed to one of them in three weeks.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll say Mammoth Cave National Park?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Wind Cave.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: I am looking at the biggest.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's on the list, too.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Wind cave at Badlands together or together.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's a trip that's going to happen in the next little little bit.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: Pardon my jealousy.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Which National Park was one of the locations for Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine in Star Wars?
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Death Valley National Park.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: There you go.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which National Park is the only park to put a bid in to host the Olympic Games?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Yosemite.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: It is Yosemite.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: They a concessionaire, Don Triseter, I'm not sure, aimed to make the park like the Switzerland of the West.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: So he put a bid in for the 1932 Olympics, and the bid actually went to Lake Placid.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, which national park did Yogi Bear call home?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, Jellystone is what they called it.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Very good.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: Nice job.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Got you, got you.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is our trivia.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is our show.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tom, thank you so much for coming on and telling us all the amazing things that CBF is doing to educate kids, educate educators.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's some amazing work.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Tom.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, glad to be here.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, looking forward to partnering with Lancaster Clean Water Partners and all of our friends up in up in Lancaster to do some amazing things for students and teachers over the next five to ten years and beyond.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: That's right.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much for joining us today and for being such an inspiration for my work.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: This you're part of a reason I'm here.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you're one of my favorite people, and I would never turn down an opportunity like this.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Call me back whenever you whenever you want to, whenever you want to talk more education.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: That sounds great.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we will be back in just a couple of weeks.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Take care.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, everybody.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_03: Bye-bye.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: This episode of Clean Water Conversations is sponsored by RKK, Creative Solutions, Responsive People.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: And produced by Lancaster Clean Water Partners, striving for clean and clear water by 2040.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you have comments, suggestions for show topics, or are interested in becoming a show sponsor, please contact us at infol at Lancaster Cleanwater Partners.com.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.