From Visiting Professionals to Videoconferences: Using Creative Catalysts to Infuse Environmental Health Sciences Content into the K-12 Curriculum

Abstract

There are many excellent reasons for including the basics of environmental health sciences, including toxicology, in the topics taught in our nation's K-12 classrooms. In addition to being supported by various state and federal mandates, the teaching of these topics lend itself to the best practices of successful educators, such as integrated teaching, inquiry-based learning, and community-connected schools. Most important, however, is the need to create a well-equipped citizenry to struggle with the issues that arise where human health and the environment intersect; issues that are increasingly urgent, contentions, and complex. While creating curricular materials and offering teacher workshops are excellent ways to bring about change within K-12 classroom, there are other methods to creatively influence what happens in our nation's schools. Two of these approaches have been particulary successful for outreach staff at the Center for Ecogenetics and Environmental Health (CEEH) at the University of Washington in Seattle. Creating a resource kit (Tox-in-a-Box TM ) to encourage environemntal health sciences professionals to conduct classroom visits has helped turn underutilized population into a powerful resource for K-12 transformation. The relatively new technology of multipoint videoconferencing also has been used to successfully involve both students and teachers in exploration of community-based issues related to the environmental health sciences.