Increasing Environmental Literacy
Semester: Spring 2023
Faculty Advisor: Don Barber
Field Site:
Field Supervisor: Gillian Mulder
Praxis Poster:
Isolde Gerosa_PIS_Praxis Poster_Final
Further Context:
Hi! My name is Isolde, I’m a senior Environmental Studies major at Bryn Mawr, and for my Praxis Independent Study I interned with Seaside Sustainability (SS). I titled my course Sustainability in Education, as I specifically worked under SS’s Green Scholars program, on their Environmental Literacy team. This team focuses on the production of the Green Scholars curriculum – a textbook style educational tool designed to teach middle to high school students the basics of environmental science. The curriculum currently comprises a number of topics, from chapters detailing systems in weather and climate, to case studies explaining issues in environmental justice. There is no publication date yet, but we hope to
promote it to a number of schools across the United States once it is fully finalized!
The majority of my work focused on editing sections of the curriculum itself. I was tasked with adding diagrams and images to specific sections, as well as creating challenging discussion questions or quizzes for the end of some chapters. Some weeks, my tasks were to review sections for content enhancements and grammar checking. We are also in the process of converting sections of the curriculum to a video format, therefore I also worked on outlining chapters to a script style.
The entirety of my internship was online, allowing me to connect with interns all across the country, and meet other dedicated and passionate environmentally-focused students. Working remotely also introduced its own set of challenges, such as difficulty in connecting with my fellow team members. The dynamic environment at SS creates a constant flow of
interns, coming and leaving every few months. This makes it difficult to create an eloquent flow to the curriculum, as a large number of narrators each provide their own voice to just one chapter.
Overall, every aspect of my internship has taught me a number of lessons – from education programming to functioning in a remote workplace. I am looking forward to completing my internship this summer!