We provide a variety of professional development opportunities for educators. We welcome your inquiries and will gladly discuss ideas for how we can collaborate to develop and meet your educational needs.
With our teacher workshops, educators develop skills and knowledge to provide authentic, place-based, investigative experiences for students as well as explore integrative approaches to weave science, math, and language arts into activities and lessons, develop engineering skills, and apply 21st-century skills (5Cs), all while incorporating the Virginia Standards of Learning.
Pedagogical Resources can include science content, process, and skills as well as lesson planning resources (for example: materials to teach evolution, biodiversity, weather, global climate change, watershed science, ecological structure and complexity).
To discuss teacher professional development options, contact Candace Lutzow-Felling (lutzow-felling@virginia.edu and 540-837-1758 ext. 230).
Our fee structure for customized professional development is:
| Length | 3 - 4 hour | 6 hour |
| Up to 20 participants | $400 | $600 |
| 21 to 60 participants | $800 | $1200 |
| More than 61 participants | Call to discuss |
This professional development fee includes training design, logistical planning, instruction, and office supplies (such as binders, newsprint, markers, printing of resource materials). Purchase of books and other supplies unique to the professional development will be an additional cost.
Our Education Team also can facilitate any of the following national education programs for a group of teachers at a selected location in your school division. A minimum number of participants is ten. We also offer at least one of these programs at Blandy each year.
- Project Learning Tree (PLT) is an award-winning environmental education program for educators working with preK through 8th grades. The activities are interdisciplinary and are designed to help educators add environmental education to their curricula. During the workshop participants engage in activities that they can implement in their classroom. Each participant receives a (preK-8) PLT Environmental Education Activity Guide. PLT also has developed Secondary Modules for grades 9-12; we are certified trainers for these secondary modules, too.
- Project Underground focuses on caves and karst topography. Facilitators and participants work together in trying hands-on activities from the Education Guide. Participants receive a Project Underground Natural Resource Education Guide suitable for grades K-12.
- Project WILD is an interdisciplinary environmental education program emphasizing wildlife and the environment created by the National Council for Environmental Education. With the activities in the K- 12 Curriculum and Activity Guide, educators bring awareness and appreciation of wildlife into the classroom.
- Flying Wild is another environmental program from the National Council for Environmental Education. The Educator’s Guide to Celebrating Birds focuses on the science of bird conservation and bird migration. This program, designed for grades 3-8, was developed with the input of conservation organizations and environmental educators. It's great for the formal classroom, an informal learning setting, or outreach events.
- Project Wet Educate. Empower. Act. The mission of Project WET is to reach children, parents, educators, and communities of the world with water education. We invite you to join us in learning strategies to educate children about the most precious resource on the planet — water. Workship participants will recieve the Project WET Curriculum and Activity Guide.with activities for all K-12 grade levels.
- Growing up Wild is an early childhood education curriculum that builds on children’s sense of wonder about nature and invites them to explore wildlife and the world around them. Through a wide range of activities and experiences, Growing Up WILD provides an early foundation for developing positive impressions about the natural world and lifelong social and academic skills.
Please call 540-837-1758 ext. 290 or email schprog@virginia.edu for more information.