REEF's Field Survey Trip to Bonaire in July had two special guests: Educator in the Field Fellows Erin Schmidt and Mikayla Neff. REEF Educator in the Field Fellows are dedicated educators who applied to receive a fully funded participant spot on the trip. They spent their week diving, learning fish identification, building relationships with other REEF members, and gathering ideas on how to bring REEF's citizen science programs back to their classrooms.
Erin has been a high school biology and ecology teacher in Minnesota for more than 20 years. She loves to bring her personal experience of the natural world back to her classroom and uses storytelling and citizen science to help her students develop an explorer's mindset. "On my first dive, I identified 14 species to upload into the database, and by my last dive, that number climbed to 50," Erin said. "I can't wait to analyze the data and create lesson plans that connect real-world ocean conservation to my classroom, hopefully inspiring the next generation of marine stewards!"
Mikayla is a high school English teacher in California. She believes that both literacy and marine education begin with learning how to observe closely, ask meaningful questions, and share stories that inspire people to care. "I came home excited to bring what I learned back into my classroom and introduce my students to fish identification, citizen science, and the ways ordinary people can contribute meaningful data to environmental research," Mikayla said.
They both scored 100% on the Level 2 test and will serve on REEF's Education Advisory Panel for the next year. As panel members, they will share an educational resource they created about their experience and lend their classroom expertise to REEF's lessons, which are used in field trips at the Ocean Exploration Center and delivered virtually to classrooms around the world.