Education Workgroup Publications

A companion text to the Educator's Guide to the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience to support effective MWEE professional learning experiences for teachers and educators.

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The cornerstone of the Environmental Literacy Goal of the 2014 Watershed Agreement is providing teacher-supported meaningful watershed educational experiences --MWEEs-- in elementary, middle, and high school. This guide has been designed for users with varying leves of familiarity with the MWEE.

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The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Environmental Literacy Indicator Tool (ELIT) was developed to monitor the capacity and progress of public school districts toward meting the environmental literacy goal stated in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement: Enable every student in the region to graduate with the knowledge and skills to act responsibly to protect and restore their local watershed.

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The purpose of the Chesapeake Bay Program's Environmental Literacy Indicator Tool (ELIT) is to help local and state schools systems collect important information that will help advance the implementation of environmental education efforts in schools in the mid-Atlantic region. This tool, the data collected, and related efforts supporting environmental education in the region are in direct support of the Environmental Literacy Goal and Outcomes of the new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement (signed 6/19/14).

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The Chesapeake Bay Watershed Environmental Literacy Indicator Tool (ELIT) was developed to monitor the capacity and progress of public school districts toward meting the environmental literacy goal stated in the 2014 Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement: Enable every student in the region to graduate with the knowledge and skills to act responsibly to protect and restore their local watershed.

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An Educator’s Guide to the Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE) is an easy-to-use manual for constructing high-quality educational experiences for all students. Our hope is that this guide is used by teachers and non-formal educators to deepen and strengthen outdoor learning for students throughout the region and that this leads to young citizens who understand and respect our natural world.

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Managers are making tremendous progress identifying and tackling environmental issues facing the Chesapeake Bay. However, many of the remaining challenges to a healthier ecosystem are complex, diffuse, and directly in the hands of citizens, including energy use, automobile emissions, and urban and suburban runoff. These issues force individuals, businesses, and communities to make hard decisions, and require a thoughtful public engagement strategy that begins in the schools with our youngest citizens.

The Mid Atlantic Elementary and Secondary Environmental Literacy Strategy draws on the full strength of the federal government to support state efforts to transform their schools to provide the next generation of citizen stewards the knowledge and skills they need to make informed environmental decisions.

It builds upon the long history of federal-state cooperation of the Chesapeake Bay Program to create a model that showcases how the federal government can support and influence sophisticated state environmental education efforts, which is important because of the highly localized nature of pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade (PK-12) education.

The strategy calls upon federal, state, and nongovernmental partners to advance shared priorities in four key areas—students, educators, schools, and the environmental education community. Together, these partners have the vision, expertise, and resources to create and support schools that foster citizen stewardship and graduate environmentally literate students.

The full version of this document is available for download here: Complete Document

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Managers are making tremendous progress identifying and tackling environmental issues facing the Chesapeake Bay. However, many of the remaining challenges to a healthier ecosystem are complex, diffuse, and directly in the hands of citizens, including energy use, automobile emissions, and urban and suburban runoff. These issues force individuals, businesses, and communities to make hard decisions, and require a thoughtful public engagement strategy that begins in the schools with our youngest citizens.

The Mid Atlantic Elementary and Secondary Environmental Literacy Strategy draws on the full strength of the federal government to support state efforts to transform their schools to provide the next generation of citizen stewards the knowledge and skills they need to make informed environmental decisions.

It builds upon the long history of federal-state cooperation of the Chesapeake Bay Program to create a model that showcases how the federal government can support and influence sophisticated state environmental education efforts, which is important because of the highly localized nature of pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade (PK-12) education.

The strategy calls upon federal, state, and nongovernmental partners to advance shared priorities in four key areas—students, educators, schools, and the environmental education community. Together, these partners have the vision, expertise, and resources to create and support schools that foster citizen stewardship and graduate environmentally literate students.

Download: Executive Summary

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By this agreement, the Executive Committee members commit themselves to continually work to ensure that students have been exposed to concepts in environmental literacy and have examined strategies to foster their restoration and protection.

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The Chesapeake Bay is dependent upon the actions of every citizen in the watershed, both today and in the future. The Bay's future will soon rest in the hands of its youngest citizens. Our students, future Bay leaders, should be armed with the knowledge and skills need to make informed choices, have a sense of history and excitement about the nation's largest estuary and an understanding of how their individual actions affect this national treasure.

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