Our final week of the Coral Reef Ed-Ventures 2020 program! Team STARRS finalized work on our Coral-related Marine Activities website, with the help and advice of Professor Shannon Audley and Ms. Graeham Dodd, Director of Curriculum Design and Innovation at the Smith College Campus School. The website includes the lessons and online activities that we created during the previous weeks of the program. This website has been shared with various volunteers that will give us feedback on the content of the lessons, and it is now posted here.

Covid-19 has made the year 2020 a year like no other throughout the world, as we all know! Although our Coral Ed Team didn’t expect to have to work remotely when we signed up for the 2020 program, I believe we got far more done than we anticipated when Coral Ed transitioned to remote format for the first time in its history. The 21st year of Coral Reef Ed-Ventures will be remembered for happening despite the adversities faced, and we hope that the materials developed this summer will be of great use for the program’s 22nd year in summer 2021! 

We would like to thank everyone who made this year’s program possible, and all who contributed to the development of lessons and activities, especially:

1. Coral-Ed alums who took the time to connect, converse, and advise us on how to develop engaging and meaningful lessons for different age groups, as well as how to transition into online programming. 
2. Media outlets in San Pedro, Belize that helped us disseminate the news that we would not be conducting the Coral Ed camps this summer due to the current pandemic circumstances. 
3. Joanne Benkley for all the “behind the scenes” administrative work. 
4. Professor Shannon Audley for working so closely with us in the lesson plan development process, in assisting us on how to incorporate anti-racist education into our lessons, and for helping us set up the website. 
5. Professors Denise Lello, L. David Smith and founder Professor Emeritus Al Curran for modifying the program to be completely remote, giving us the opportunity to be part of the team, and providing us with so much support and encouragement throughout the program. 
6. Thank you to all of you who supported our summer 2020 Coral Ed program and who have been keeping up with our updates. You are part of this team as much as us!.

Lastly, I personally want to thank my team members for all the hard work and commitment to the program this summer and for helping one another, not just with our program duties, but also with other personal circumstances that came up along the way. We did it! 

–       Yeiny Moreno, Smith College Class of 2020 and Team STARRS

This week team STARRS began to develop online activities that could be used by children any time. We look forward to trying them out with volunteers in the Smith community and beyond this summer. We also began planning for an in-person camp next year. In order to prepare materials accessible online. team STARRS spoke with Coral Ed Alums Dana Vera and Kayla Clark. Dana and Kayla continue to work in education and were able to give helpful advice in terms of how to create effective lesson plans. Team STARRS explored google forms as a potential platform for the remote camp. Two previously made lesson plans were converted into google forms to allow for campers to work remotely. Converting these plans to google forms helped us to get a better understanding for how google forms works. The next step will be to come up with a platform through which to share these lesson plans. Having panels with alums has given us tools and options for hosting platforms. Alums have informed us of resources such as flip grid, newsela, remind, and nearpod. Alums also inspired us through providing us examples of their own lesson plans.

In order to prepare for next year’s camp we came up with a few ideas for a theme and mural. After talking amongst one another we decided it might be good to build the camp around the themes of environmental justice, intersectionality, advocacy, and climate change in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope to build the camp around the idea of change and building a better future.  In order to articulate these plans we are in the process of coming up with a name for the camp. At the moment we have two ideas for a name for the camp. One being “Changemakers: The Sea and Me” and the other being “What’s in Me, The Change in the Sea.” We would love if you could help us to come up with a name by using this link to vote! And remember to check back next week for more updates!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YYJ8XW6

-Cassandra Gonzalez and team STARRS