2023 Partner Teacher Conference

1A. Creating a Home for Biodiversity: Ecological Restoration at Bluff Spring Fen

Come learn about the ecological restoration happening at Bluff Spring Fen. Explore the effects of 35+ years of habitat management on the plants and animals, including butterflies, that call Bluff Spring Fen home.

1B. Slither, Crawl, Croak, and Flutter

Immerse yourself in wildlife conservation by meeting local species and learning about Nature Museum conservation projects. Discover the need for local wildlife conservation, explore the research happening at the Nature Museum, and examine how life histories of different organisms impact the conservation decisions we make.

1C. Butterfly Monitoring: Documenting Trends in Butterfly Population Sizes at Different Scales

Explore how the Nature Museum’s Illinois Butterfly Monitoring Network data has gone from a tool for land managers to guide their local restoration strategies to becoming a way to understand larger trends in our regional and national biodiversity.

1D. A Place in Time

Consider the story a landscape can tell you by learning more about how it changes through time, the habitats it provides, and the life it supports.

2A. Specimen Stories: What can specimens from the Nature Museum’s collection tell us about local birds?

Where do the bird specimens in the Nature Museum’s collection come from? Who collects them, and how and why are they preserved? Meet one of the museum’s preparators, and follow the journey of a specimen from sky to showcase.

2B. Why are we messing with North Pond?

Using the restoration plan at North Pond as a case study, explore the multiple stakeholders and ecological issues considered when managing natural spaces and urban parks in your neighborhood. Learn how and why restoration projects are completed and how they are managed to ensure systems are maintained.

2C. Place-Based Learning Experiences At Your School

Connect students to the hidden gems around your school and community to create opportunities for student driven exploration, investigation, and understanding. Learn about innovative, place-based resources to plan a new type of aligned learning experience for you and your students.

2D. Fostering a Sense of Belonging: In museums and in STEM

Join the Museum of Science and Industry’s education research and evaluation experts to learn about their work measuring belonging at museums. Explore how to apply these principles in your own teaching – and in partnerships with museums – to create learning experiences that foster meaningful STEM and civic identities.

3A. Phenomenon Finding: Anchor a Learning Experience In a Local Science Story

Engage students’ curiosity about nature in their own community by designing your own locally focused lesson, sequence, or a unit. Collect objects, observations, and images to help your students make sense of neighborhood nature phenomena.

3B. Analyzing and Interpreting Data Across Grades

Any time we observe the natural world, we are collecting data. To make sense of our observations, we can gather more data, or use data from other people in the community. Unpack what analyzing data looks like at each grade band and explore opportunities for students to use data to understand the nature in their community.

3C. Documenting Personal Connections With Nature

Dig into interdisciplinary science education strategies by exploring various types of learner-driven nature documentation approaches. Discover how these science and education tools can be used as various storytelling modalities and how they can be powerful vehicles for social-emotional learning within core academic experiences.

3D. Engineering Inspired by Nature

Look to the natural world to inspire engineering solutions to human problems. In this session, participants will explore the creativity, collaboration, and productive failure that are embedded in authentic student engineering challenges inspired by the natural world’s 4 billion years of design and evolution.