One way RIEEA supports our members is with professional development (PD) scholarships to support lifelong learning. Recently, we awarded scholarships to Clare Kim, Program Manager with Roots 2Empower. Here is a summary of how this scholarship helped expand their connections and environmental education knowledge:
This spring I enrolled in a seven-week crash course with the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI), which is housed under the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, CA. In this course, participants engaged in synchronous and asynchronous learning around strategic framing in climate change communications.
I gained access to several meaningful resources throughout my time in the course and had some of my pre-existing notions of how people perceive climate change challenged. For example, 66-80% of Americans support climate mitigation policies; however, the perception of how many Americans support these policies is much lower (people think only 37-43% of Americans are supportive). My ideas of how to approach the topic of climate change, too, were challenged. One useful tool from the course is a map of cultural mindsets based on studies from the FrameWorks Institute to help navigate common productive and unproductive attitudes towards climate change. Surprisingly, the assumption that “better information = better decisions” is a pitfall to avoid—instead, people are much more likely to change their behavior when you focus on existing community-level solutions and guide them toward making concrete changes that benefit the collective.
I have already begun incorporating this training into my role as a public educator. I am engaging in strategic framing to cast wide nets that remind people of our shared values: to protect people and the environment by managing our resources responsibly. As someone who has completed the course, I get to be a part of the NNOCCI network, which extends from the Pacific to the Atlantic and involves many different kinds of climate change interpreters. My goal is to continue to share my learning with my local network of educators, advocates, and community leaders in RI so that the pathway for climate action in our state is clear, inclusive, and realizable. Thank you RIEEA for making this opportunity possible!