By Tara Muenz
More than 30 years ago, the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER) was founded with a vision to design and implement transformative, experiential learning that develops local and global environmental leaders who work to conserve and restore functioning landscapes in the Amazon Basin and beyond.
Through a recently funded grant from the Longwood Foundation, ACEER has partnered with Stroud™ Water Research Center and the Delaware Teachers Institute (DTI) to develop curricula that foster an understanding of the Amazon rainforest, taking the lessons the Amazon offers for how to live sustainably and bring it home to schools and communities across the globe.
Fifteen teachers from Delaware have attended partner-led video sessions on tools such as the Leaf Pack Network® to engage students in environmental literacy concepts. This summer, the Stroud Center hosted part of the 3-day foundation-building workshop to immerse teachers in leaf pack methods, affordable paper microscopes, Indigenous wisdom of the Lenni-Lenape, navigation tools, and camera trapping. These tools will help meet Next Generation Science Standards and foster a mutual understanding between cultures of the Lenape and Indigenous people of Amazonian Peru, which we hope to visit in 2022!
Learn more: Read ACEER’s blog post | Meet the 2021 Teacher Partners
