Why Education Needs More Field Work (and Less Theory)

🌍 Discover how Presidential Award winner Helen Corveleyn revolutionizes elementary STEM education through international fieldwork and outdoor learning! From swimming with whale sharks in Baja to studying orangutans in Borneo, Helen brings real-world science experiences to her K-5 classroom.

In this inspiring interview, Helen shares her innovative teaching strategies that transform student engagement and motivation. Learn how she takes students outside 50% of the time, integrates social-emotional learning with STEM, and creates authentic fieldwork experiences using professional scientific tools. Her approach to active learning and student participation has earned recognition from the White House!

🔥 What You'll Learn:
• How to increase student engagement through outdoor education
• Effective teaching strategies for inspiring students in STEM
• Professional development opportunities through Project Dragonfly
• Innovative teaching methods that connect classroom to real world
• Student motivation techniques using hands-on experiences
• Lesson planning ideas that promote student participation
• Education strategies for whole child development

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction to Helen Corveleyn
2:08 Helen's Educational Background & Inspiration
5:16 The STEM Education Crisis: Only 17 Minutes Daily
9:14 Reimagining School: Indoor vs Outdoor Learning
12:23 Creating STEM Units with NGSS Standards
17:42 Presidential Award Application & White House Experience
22:41 Outdoor Learning Philosophy: 50/50 Indoor/Outdoor Split
23:51 Project Dragonfly International Fieldwork Program
26:57 Swimming with Whale Sharks in Baja, Mexico
28:04 Life-Changing Moment in Borneo Rainforest
30:49 Bringing International Experiences to Elementary Students
34:58 Call to Action: Global Conservation & STEM Pipeline
39:00 Closing Thoughts & Appreciation

• STEM
• Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST)
• NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards)
• Hopewell Valley Education Foundation & Nature Harmony Project
• Colby Cedar Smith - Call Me Athena: Girl From Detroit
• National Science Foundation
• Project Dragonfly through Miami University of Ohio
• Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) (2022)

Helen's Publications:

• The Promise of Pickles: Hydroponics in the Classroom
• Growing Environmental Hope Amid a Pandemic

When teachers, coaches, administrators, and families grow together, schools change. Students get engaged, get support, and get the chance to thrive. 

Transcript

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Schoolutions – S2 E9: Fighting for Our Planet by Applying International Fieldwork in the Classroom with Helen Corveleyn, Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching Recipient

[00:00:00] Olivia: Welcome to Schoolutions, where listening will leave you inspired by solutions to issues you or others you know may be struggling with in the public education system today. I am Olivia Wahl, I am honored to welcome my guest today, Helen Corveleyn.  Helen, is a science, technology, engineering, and math facilitator, also known as STEM, a friend, and a colleague that I've known for close to ten years.

[00:00:29] Olivia: Helen has taught at Hopewell Elementary School for 13 years and is the recipient of countless awards for her work. I will make sure to list them in the show notes. Helen's passion is inspiring young people to become planetary stewards who communicate scientific ideas. And promote innovation in science and sustainability.

[00:00:51] Olivia: Helen lives out her mission by serving on boards and running projects like the Nature Harmony Project, which infuses STEM and the arts with social-emotional learning in an outdoor education setting. She teaches graduate students at the College of New Jersey and Environmental Leadership and Conservation Biology at Miami university of Ohio.

[00:01:13] Olivia: Over this interview, Helen will share about her international fieldwork with Project Dragonfly in how it includes studying island, biogeography, and whale sharks in Baja, Mexico, orangutans and sustainable palm oil in Borneo, Malaysia, and creating a multimedia-based conservation campaign to support the Belize Zoo and Maya Forest Corridor.

[00:01:39] Olivia: Most recently, Helen received one of the highest honors an educator can. Earlier this year, the White House named her a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching. What a privilege it is to have you as a guest, Helen. Welcome. 

[00:01:59] Helen: Wow, what a beautiful opening into your fabulous podcast. Thank you so much for having me here, Olivia. This is a true pleasure. 

[00:02:08] Olivia: I am humbled, and I will never forget meeting you for the first time around ten years ago. I was facilitating professional learning around literacy and this lovely woman walks into the room and says: Hey, do you mind if I join the session?

[00:02:23] Olivia: And I thought I've never met this person before. And it ends up, you are the STEM educator at the building, and you wanted to bridge connections between your work for the children and the literacy professional learning we were doing. And Helen, still to this day, you are an anomaly. You truly are. 

[00:02:42] Helen: So nice of you to say, I do really appreciate and value the welcome that you gave me into that conversation. I started off as a seventh-grade science teacher, and then after having my children really decided that seventh grade is a really hard time to have your mom in your school district. So that elementary might be an easier entry point for me. Starting out as an elementary school teacher, I felt like I was missing a lot of information on literacy and, you know, different writing models.

[00:03:14] Helen: And I really wanted to make sure that I was up on those areas. And you welcomed me into that conversation and turned me into a passionate lover of books and literacy right from our very first meeting point. So, I owe you a big thank you as well. 

[00:03:30] Olivia: Well, you inspire me as an educator, and I love to ask my guests who an inspiring educator is from their life. Would you share for listeners? 

[00:03:40] Helen: Absolutely. I would have to go with both my mom and my grandfather. They were both French teachers. And, uh, they, I'm getting filled up because they just had a passion for educating. No matter how old they were, or what point in their life, they wanted people to love their subject area.

[00:04:00] Helen: So, I grew up in a household where you could never say: Monet. You had to say, Monet. The French always kind of had to come out. That passion for just learning wasn't science, it was for French, but you know, that just shines through and shows you the importance of being a lifelong learner. 

[00:04:19] Olivia: Absolutely. The reason I wanted to have you as a guest is because now in education and really for a long time, there are not in my mind enough real-world connections for our students.

[00:04:32] Olivia: Well, let's just face it, time, even in the school day carved for curiosity and inquiry, especially when it comes to our climate and our natural environment. And you have a mission that you live out every single day of your life as an educator. I'll say it again, I think it's so beautiful: Inspiring young people to become planetary stewards who communicate scientific ideas and promote innovation in science and sustainability.

[00:05:01] Olivia: You've got to share more too about your international fieldwork, but before you jump into that, I'd love for you to share for listeners what sparked your passion and sustains your dedication to promoting elementary STEM education? 

[00:05:16] Helen: So, one of the main wake-up calls that I received was when I was working with 100Kin10, which has since renamed themselves, but they were building capacity to create more STEM teachers.

[00:05:29] Helen: And one of the statistics that they used was that in elementary STEM education, typically the average amount of minutes that kids get per day is 17 minutes in science. So, kids cheer when they see the STEM teacher coming in, right? They cheer because they love the engagement. They love the fact that they know I'm a guarantee to have hands-on, outdoor experiences that are inquiry-based, that promote things that they can relate to in their world, that look at scientific phenomena in an accessible, relevant way.

[00:06:05] Helen: They're not cheering for me. They're cheering for what I embody and what I bring to them and the opportunities that they get. And so, when I think about 17 minutes per day, and that's probably a good average, you know, when I think about that, and I think the fact that when a child is young, they're the most creative and most imaginative, and that just slowly leaves them for all of the different reasons that happen in our systemic educational society.

[00:06:34] Helen: Harnessing that creative development and creative love needs to happen and needs to be through the STEM lens, because that's really where we need to ignite that. So, when you look at the STEM jobs in our future, between 2017 and 2029, there's an increase of 8% of expected STEM jobs, which 8% doesn't sound very much, but when you know that it's 3. 5 million jobs in STEM that need to be filled by 2025, and you have kids that are not being inspired within STEM careers and STEM fields from the early age of kindergarten, that's a problem. 

[00:07:14] Olivia: Yeah, it is indeed. And how did you go about getting the training? Because you are a STEM facilitator at this point, correct?

[00:07:21] Helen: Correct. So, I really, my background is in environmental science, which I always had a hard time knowing that as an environmental scientist, as an integrated career, I really felt that environmental science embodied all of the sciences together. So that's what drew me to it is because it wasn't just biology or chemistry or physics that it was kind of everything wrapped up.

[00:07:43] Helen: It always bothered me that I couldn't get certified as a teacher with an environmental science degree. 

[00:07:49] Olivia: It's interesting. 

[00:07:50] Helen: That was always a bother to me. So, I set out to turn kids into environmentalists because then if they wanted to branch into biology or chemistry, they could, but they had a great strong sense of their earth and the natural phenomena, and that just set them up for great STEM learning in whatever career that they wanted to branch off of.

[00:08:10] Helen: When I think about that STEM pipeline that we need to be supporting in education, that comes from igniting passion at a young age. 

[00:08:18] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:08:18] Helen: And that comes from providing experiences that kids can link the classroom to their life and to their world. And for me, that happens in the outdoors. 

[00:08:29] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:08:31] Helen: In any walk of life, I feel that when kids are removed from their four walls and put outside, they can find and make connections that they wouldn't be doing inside the classroom.

[00:08:43] Olivia: But Helen, it also makes me think about how we need to reimagine or redefine what school is. Because you just mentioned many people consider school the four walls of a classroom, yet that's not at all the case if we really want students to transfer and feel empowered, right, to carry lessons. So, for listeners to understand how does a typical period or a unit evolve for you with STEM education? You can choose a grade level and give us an example.  

[00:09:14] Helen: Yeah, so if I think about kindergarten, you know, this is very far from what my comfort level was when I started teaching in elementary school coming from middle school because I really tended towards that upper elementary.

[00:09:26] Helen: So, when I became the STEM facilitator, I really had to kind of. readjust my expectations that I would come in, you know, with probably two and a half hours’ worth of material to teach a 25-minute allotment. And the teachers would just kind of look at me and shake their heads and say, well, boy, here she comes.

[00:09:43] Helen: And so, over the years I had to refine my process in kindergarten and really introduce them to science skills of being an observer and of creating your body movements to match the learning that wants to happen, right? So, in the early ages, we talk about what does it look like when your body feels like it's having a party?

[00:10:08] Olivia: Yes. 

[00:10:08] Helen: That's a party body, right? And so, a party body is not actually ready to receive scientific information. You need to have a body that's open and ready and calm with calm hands to be science hands. And so, you lay that foundational principle where it seems like social-emotional learning wouldn't maybe necessarily go right with STEM, but it really does.

[00:10:36] Helen: So much of that are skills that can be taught and that can be then utilized and applied and just naturally make them better scientists. So, something of having a calm body, having a lesson that incorporates yoga and breathing and anti-anxiety. What that transfers into as a fifth grader is when you are in a high school engineering environment where you are building against time and you have, um, engineering constraints that are being put on you.

[00:11:10] Helen: If you have skills that you learned in kindergarten of how to quiet your body, center yourself, assess the problem, and then apply the engineering practices, all of a sudden they know how to do it. They know how to switch that on. And the fact that my position allows me to see and work with kids from kindergarten and sometimes even preschool up into fifth grade, that I have a consistent touch point with them.

[00:11:40] Helen: I know what I've done with them, but this builds those strategies that you were talking about in the beginning. How are we reimagining schools? Well by having a position like this and a school that values STEM education enough to have a dedicated teacher to developing and enhancing these skills within students’ education is a real benefit and a lot of school systems don't value that and so I really appreciate the fact that mine does.

[00:12:08] Olivia: How are you creating the units of study that go from inquiry-based learning kindergarten through fifth grade? Is it based on New Jersey standards? Do you have freedom to create those units? 

[00:12:23] Helen: So, you really nailed it when you said freedom and everything that I do is based in NGSS Standards and I know them inside and out and can tell you which fits with what I listen to us in the Sid the Science Kid episode or Octonauts and I hear the standards being put in. That is definitely my ultimate guidance. 

[00:12:43] Olivia: I wanted to just offer for listeners, NGSS are the Next Generation Science Standards, correct? 

[00:12:50] Helen: Correct. Thank you for clarifying. 

[00:12:52] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:12:52] Helen: When you live in the world, you forget to, you forget to define. Then using the technology to enhance those NGSS standards and using the engineering to apply it. Engineering is really looking for human solutions to human-created problems. And so that's when the conversation of climate is so naturally put in to engineering and when you talk about our planet being sick, right? Having a fever and the fact that we cause that problem but the fact that we caused the problem also means that we could fix it.

[00:13:25] Helen: So, when you cause a problem, you know how, when you break something, you know how to fix it. Or you have to look for solutions to fix it. And so, when we talk about, you know, big world issues, you wonder how that can be done in kindergarten, first grade, second grade. And that is done through STEM education.

[00:13:48] Olivia: Part of our journey as learners together was always trying to play out and think about the literacy connections. How can we incorporate the work that you're doing with students through inquiry into units of study? 

[00:14:01] Helen: One of the things that I really felt that was missing from my career and from what I was doing, I'm big on, you know, having kids' hands in the dirt, right?

[00:14:11] Helen: Both metaphorically and literally. So, for me, that comes easily, right? Creating large-scale conservation projects that the whole school can benefit from. Pairing with other organizations outside of the school districts, local conservation organizations here in Hopewell, we have several in Mountain Conservancy, Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space and the Watershed, all that we pair with to show community support, right?

[00:14:38] Helen: So, I can do that very easily. And that is something that's very natural to me. So, what I had to challenge myself to do for a unit of study is to be able to say: How can I take something that I don't usually focus on and bring that in? I wrote a grant to have a poet in residence and her name is Colby Cedar Smith.

[00:14:58] Helen: She's actually the author of a fabulous young adult novel written in verse called Call Me Athena and she published this phenomenal volume of poems and I thought to myself how amazing would that be to use our natural world and study completely outside and based in nature? Take a unit of study in fourth grade and create a poetry unit just around nature and expression.

[00:15:29] Helen: We wrote a grant and that was from Young Audiences of New Jersey. And that brought her in as a poet in residence for, I want to say thirty lessons. So, it added up to about a month and two weeks. So, a month and a half to be able to do that every day with a great level, have adult development of poetic skills together.

[00:15:52] Helen: And so that was really under the Nature Harmony Project. That's kind of how the Nature Harmony Project got its beginnings, is to be able to say, hey, let's utilize outdoor spaces, bring kids outside, and teach poetry. And then what blossomed from that was incredible self-expression, self-discovery, and I know that I'm preaching to the choir for you, Olivia, because of your deep roots in literacy, but for me, it was an awakening as an adult poet.

[00:16:23] Helen: And how often do we ever get to say that? Almost never, right? Letting children see you having a growth mindset. I'll always say everybody has their specialty areas, right? Nature and science are my specialty areas, but when I teach with Ms. Colby, the specialty areas that come through, I can work on myself, and I can develop how to express and create beauty with words.

[00:16:47] Helen: I want to create beauty with relationships and I'm really good at that. But creating beauty with words and communicating scientific principles that are really sometimes hard for people to hear when you learn how to write in poetic verse and you learn how to express yourself, you can touch people in a very different way than you do with data and scientific statistics.

[00:17:12] Olivia: It's so tangible for listeners to think about how to take STEM education and the arts and incorporate poetry, free verse, and to express the beauty in the world around us. It is not surprising at all after hearing you and listening to your journey so far for listeners to wrap their minds around the fact that you received one of the highest awards that an educator could fathom.

[00:17:42] Olivia: I'd love to hear about the nomination, the application process, how that went, and what it was like to receive that award at the White House. I can't even imagine. 

[00:17:52] Helen: So, that was an amazing experience. It happened over COVID. It's a deep, difficult process of application. The application itself probably took me in total about 24 hours to write, construct, rewrite, and then you have to videotape a lesson.

[00:18:09] Helen: We were masked, and I didn't have necessarily professional recording equipment. I had some amazing support from my principal, David, and from the guidance counselor, Amy, who had fabulous recording equipment. And I said: Well, we're taking the show on the road. We're going outside. And they were like: Really, you want to record this outside?

[00:18:27] Helen: I said: Well, that's where I do my best work. So, you know, we're going down by the stream and hopefully they can hear us. And I can maybe take off my mask because we're outside and you have to videotape yourself for something like 45 minutes, but it's continuous. So, you can't stop, start, and take clips. It has to be all the way through so that was a challenge.

[00:18:47] Helen: And then once you find out if you're a state finalist, then you have a chance to rewrite your application in certain areas based on feedback, which I actually thought it mimics science beautifully because you did have a chance to then go back and develop some of your thought processes that the panel wanted to hear.

[00:19:07] Helen: So that was amazing. That rewrite was due, and unfortunately, one of my specialty areas is not being timely and not procrastinating. So, I submitted it at the very last minute, of course, and the joke within my family is that it was due at midnight Hawaiian-Aleutian Time. No idea what Hawaiian Aleutian Time was or what time that was.

[00:19:33] Helen: And so, I actually ended up submitting the rewrites like a day late and I had to email them, and I was like, if this is what takes it away… Hawaiian Aleutian Time! And they were completely and totally understanding and incredible and said: Don't worry about it, we totally understand. And so, the award actually was known in my family as the Hawaiian Aleutian Time Award. 

[00:19:59] Olivia: I love it. 

[00:20:00] Helen: And so, when I finally did hear the news that I was chosen for this remarkable honor, I had COVID. 

[00:20:08] Olivia: Oh, no!

[00:20:09] Helen: I was in the middle of my quarantine and got the news and I just said: Oh my gosh, well, isn't that apropos? 

[00:20:18] Olivia: Yes.

[00:20:18] Helen: So, that’s the whole situation. So, the wonderful part of it was that it was one of the first ceremonies and recognitions that were in person in the in the last two years. So I was able to go down to Washington, DC, and it really did not set in for my children until they saw the hotel that we were booked in and as educators, we don't often feel, you know, held up or really truly celebrated and the National Science Foundation does an incredible job of making you feel special and elevated and just felt like a little bit of a celebrity for a few days and so my children walked into the hotel, looked around and said: Wow, mom, congratulations.

[00:21:10] Helen: And I guess that's how teenagers really figure out what special is. 

[00:21:15] Olivia: And the ceremony itself, was your family able to attend? 

[00:21:19] Helen: They were, my parents came down, and my husband and my kids, and you know, that's really, when, when children see your work being rewarded, it really is just that much more for a mom, and for an educator, the Office of White House Science and Technology Policy really did a fabulous job with honoring this award. I really am so grateful and so blessed. 

[00:21:46] Olivia: Well, Helen, you're an incredible human and you deserve this honor. And I know from being a mom and an educator, we work tirelessly to support other people's children often. And so, to have our own children see our work and understand the significance of the hours that we are not always with them.

[00:22:08] Olivia: The work of being an educator, it steals moments and minutes from time with family in ways that most people couldn't understand. And it's this love-hate balance. The amount of boards and time you spend to support this endeavor, this mission, it's amazing. 

[00:22:28] Helen: You are so right. I mean, you just, you hit the nail on the head, they see all of the work that gets put into it and they are just so proud and so happy to celebrate. It was a wonderful, wonderful honor. 

[00:22:41] Olivia: I want listeners to understand you are not a teacher that stays put very easily. You've spoken to going, spending time outside, you know, in a class period, just to circle back, how much time do you spend outside versus inside with children? 

[00:22:58] Helen: Um, I would say I try and split it 50-50, and that includes winter as well. Winter in New Jersey is no picnic, but I really firmly believe in bringing kids out at all times of the year, not just when it's nice. And if I can get them outside in a lesson, I will. Right? So even if it's for a warm-up or for a kind of bringing it all together, I will try and almost every lesson take them out.

[00:23:25] Olivia: When I say you're not one to stay put, you jump outside of the borders of the United States to study and learn about the world around us in a global scale. And then you bring that back to your classroom, which is magnificent. Not all educators have the opportunity to do that or the means to do that.

[00:23:44] Olivia: But I would love for listeners to learn more about your international field work, specifically with Project Dragonfly. 

[00:23:51] Helen: So, Project Dragonfly is an amazing, amazing program. I cannot speak more highly about it. It is through Miami University in Ohio. And it was actually a program that I found out about when I was on a social studies conference.

[00:24:07] Helen: So, I was at the University of Southern California learning about early American history, which is what I was teaching. And I was looking for something to supplement my lack of knowledge. And through the Gilder Lerhman Institute was able to go and really deeply immerse myself in pre-colonial America, which was amazing.

[00:24:29] Helen: And in that group of historians where I for a moment contemplated getting a history master's I heard about Project Dragonfly and one of the participants in that conference had said: Oh yeah have you ever heard of this? I went to Thailand and Baja. And I forget where her third place was maybe Belize.

[00:24:50] Helen: And I just said: Are you kidding? That's amazing. How can I do this? And she said: Oh, it's my master's degree. And I said: Oh my gosh, your master's degree. That is just a phenomenal opportunity that you could travel internationally. I said: I need to get on that bandwagon. So, I joined Project Dragonfly, and I was transformed.

[00:25:13] Helen: Just transformed. I mean, it was such an amazing experience that it brings me to tears on a regular basis. Being able to find myself as an adult scientist.  I really encourage people when you're in your field and in your academic setting that you've been in maybe for a short time or a long time, but for me it was a long time, I needed something new.

[00:25:37] Helen: I needed something to reinvigorate me. I needed something that just sparked my passion again. And this program truly did that for me. It works because I was creating programs and I was developing myself as a scientist and an educator through schoolwork. And so, it was such an authentic program that was so eye-opening and then it was supported by international field experiences.

[00:26:03] Helen: It was work that I could do as a mom educator at night. So, I always joke that I got my master's degree between the hours of nine and midnight.

[00:26:12] Olivia: Gosh.

[00:26:13] Helen: Because that's when I did all of my coursework. And I would put the kids to bed and stop the mom-Ubering all over the place and sit down and write a paper. Then, in the summertime, I had the ability to go for ten days on an international field excursion where I literally was reborn. I just had to do new things. I had to challenge myself. I had to swim with whale sharks with the level of excitement in my heart where I was speaking to them in Spanish and saying: Te amo! Te amo! To try and calm my body biorhythms enough to let that mama whale shark feel the love right next to me and not swim away.

[00:26:57] Helen: And boy, when I was supposed to enter that water so quietly and calmly and my big mama body just splashed right into the water, didn't that whale shark stay right there for me as if to say: Oh girl! Here I am.

[00:27:12] Olivia: I've got you. I've got you. Oh gosh.

[00:27:18] Helen: I’ve got you! These types of experiences being in Borneo, having to take four airplanes to get to a place, a bus, a boat, and then watching women scientists in the field who were creating their own field methods and they just were amazing, hardcore scientists, I just looked at and thought, thank you for devoting your life to conservation.

[00:27:46] Olivia: Yes. Yes. So, you just shared the story about the mama whale shark and being kind and loving as mamas are. You said it was a transformative experience. Is there a moment that you could share with listeners where you thought, yeah, this is it, that this is what I need right now.

[00:28:04] Helen: So, I'm going to try and say it without crying, but when I was in Borneo, Borneo was hard physically, and it was hard as far as the temperature and the elements.

[00:28:14] Helen: But when I was in college, I really felt that I wanted to be in that top five percent of people that studied the emergent layer of the rainforest. And if I had my dream job, this is what it would be. And so, the emergent layer is really difficult to get to. And this is why it's not, you know, it's, it's very hard to just was access, and I thought, wow, how cool would that be to be one of the twenty people in the world that study in this space.

[00:28:40] Helen: So, when I finally got to Borneo, here I was in virgin rainforests, and I was like, this is my dream, that I am living what I really wanted to do walking in a rainforest canopy walk. It was like, this is incredible. And I just looked around and, you know, I burst into tears and was like, this is what I've been teaching for twenty years.

[00:29:01] Helen: And I am living what I've been teaching and trying to have kids understand, but I'm seeing it with my own eyes. And so, I thought this has got to be the pinnacle of my career until I went into the Malaysian school. And when I went into the school, they gave us the opportunity to talk to these children.

[00:29:21] Helen: Of course, I don't speak Malay. And they said: Does anybody want to just try and communicate? And I said: Oh, of course I'll get up. And not knowing any Malaysian, I just stood up and said: I'm Helen. I like to sing. La la la. Big smiles. I like to dance, and I made a fool of myself dancing around and I said: And I love our world and your country. And then after that I left that classroom and walked through the town and all of the kids were out on their porches waving and saying: Hi, Mrs. Science! Hi Mrs. Science!

[00:29:57] Helen: I thought that I wanted to be a tip top scientist in the emergent layer of the rainforest and what I found was I was doing exactly what I was meant to be. 

[00:30:08] Olivia: Yeah, Mrs. Science. 

[00:30:11] Helen: Mrs. science! And I just, I knew, I thought, well I've seen it and I've experienced Borneo and it was amazing, but educating is really my life's work.

[00:30:23] Olivia: Yeah, the children that we get to hang out with and learn alongside in our classrooms, that's the inspiration that keeps us going and showing up. How in the world do you depict these insanely incredible, amazing, awesome experiences to children when you're back on the ground in New Jersey? 

[00:30:49] Helen: Two ways. Number one, making sure that I'm doing fieldwork with them. Authentic fieldwork that is outside, that is using adult methods, that uses tools that scientists use in the real world. Kids know when you're giving them something that is a substitute, right? So, if we're doing soil coring, let's use an actual tool that scientists use to take a soil sample.

[00:31:16] Helen: Do they use it perfectly? Maybe not, but... Are they using something that an actual researcher would use? Yes. Give them a waterproof field notebook because then we can definitely go out in the rain. We don't have to worry about anything. Give them, you know, tools and experiences that so, what is happening in the real world at their level, and where it's accessible for kids.

[00:31:43] Helen: That's how I'm bringing my fieldwork back in. And you know what? I had a whole group last week that got stung by bees. Luckily there were no allergies, and we had our EpiPen, so we were very, very safe in that way. And it was more painful than anything else. But I said: This is really what Mrs. Corveleyn does in the summertime.

[00:32:02] Helen: When I take adults out into the field, we get bit up, and we get leeches on us, and it is hot, and sweaty, and wet, and just non-stop. But this is what fieldwork is, and it's not for everyone. You might not love it. But if you try it, then you'll know if you love it or not. And so, these are the things that kind of come up.

[00:32:25] Helen: The second thing is, is that I try and weave my own experiences into the lessons that I provide for kids. And this is that element that comes back to your area, Olivia, of storytelling and science. Needs more storytelling. Science needs to be communicated in an engaging fashion. It needs to take shape.

[00:32:48] Helen: Kids need to be able to hear orally - story from a different country, a different land. They need to hear it through the voices of the people in those lands. This summer I was in Belize in an archaeological site that only scientists can access. And we were looking to count how many Pumas had walked through a certain cave ecosystem.

[00:33:12] Olivia: You are so cool! Come on! 

[00:33:12] Helen: We had just spent the time looking at artifacts from the Mayan civilization that had never been touched or disrupted, and here we are looking at them with Mayan guides. And I said: Could I please record you? I teach this at my school. And they said: Oh, sure, sure. No problem. And so, I got the whole oral tradition of these tools that were passed down from grandfather and great-grandfather.

[00:33:45] Helen: And so, I have that to show my kids when we talk about Mayan engineering and then turning the corner and flipping on the computer and going from ancient artifacts to current day monitoring of using animal cams to monitor whether or not a puma had just walked where I was walking. So, you know, that kind of amazing discrepancy of ancient and current all-in-one cave ecosystem with people that are so willing to share.

[00:34:18] Helen: That's why I have to give back to my kids. 

[00:34:58] Olivia: Yes.

[00:34:20] Helen: I need to be able to say: Look at this, like, we're combining old and new, and you can do this. If you go into finance and you pick a STEM career, you can do this. Go down to Belize and see it! It's amazing down there! And there are people that want to share it, and they are willing and happy, and again, that's all through Project Dragonfly. And now I teach for them, which has been a true gift to be able to return the favor and hopefully inspire folks that work in the zoo community, and folks that work in aquariums, non-environmental nonprofits, and teachers.  

[00:34:58] Olivia: Helen, you have your time, your energy dedicated to this work. What can we do as listeners? This podcast has a reach of six continents. You're a jet setter. You're all over the world. What can we do as families, as students, as politicians to support the STEM endeavor? What is our call to action in your mind?

[00:35:23] Helen: So first of all, bravo for Six Continents. That's amazing. So fabulous that you have that breath and reach. So proud of you. I think our call to action is to be a citizen of the world you have to give back. When I fly, I really, really try and offset my carbon. All of these experiences, I feel like I need to see places to be inspired and to inspire others but in order to do that responsibly, I have to be offsetting my carbon footprint and I have to tell the kids that I'm doing that, right?

[00:35:56] Helen: And being able to teach people, you know, you have to do that responsibly. So, what you're going to take, you have to put back. So that's the first call to action. I think the gentle guidance that we have to provide on the conservation landscape is to make sure that you're always doing things thoughtfully and putting someone else before yourself and your own needs.

[00:36:16] Helen: If we can do that, that's taught through kindness of others in the elementary school. It's taught through making sure that people are aware and lifting children's voices to make them a powerful entity of change. Conservation is about changing behaviors. I try and parlay that into STEM as well, right? STEM is how we can change behaviors. 

[00:36:42] Olivia: Yes.

[00:36:42] Helen: My ultimate goal is to make the planet better and to help the planet come out of the sickness we've put it in. And I do that through STEM Education because that's a diversified reach of many, many different opportunities for kids. So just the fact that STEM has four letters.

[00:37:05] Helen: That's an amazing amount of subject areas that are covered. 

[00:37:09] Olivia: Yes.

[00:37:09] Helen: And so, if we can apply that to global conservation and being a planetary steward and a planetary citizen, this is the call to action that we have, right? So, I have started to say to kids, anything that you can do that has pro-environmental behaviors, anything that you could do to help our earth is going to help our climate and it is going to help our world as a whole to make sure that we are fixing that problem that we've caused.

[00:37:41] Helen: And if that's feeding the STEM pipeline, awesome. If that is just coming right out and saying to kids: You love physics. 

[00:37:51] Olivia: Yeah. 

[00:37:52] Helen: That's all there is to it. I think if you like this, you love physics. There's no dancing around it anymore. You need to just fill it out for kids. And you need to say: I think that your voice is so eloquent that you need to speak up for our planet for your job. You are a communicator that our planet has to have. So please, when you grow up, you need to fight for our planet. However you decide to do that, I need your voice. And so, when we start saying that to kids right from the get-go, that's the call to action is to encourage that and to raise that voice. 

[00:38:30] Olivia: You have raised me up for the ten years of knowing you. You've inspired me. And I mean, you're meeting during your prep right now in the middle of a school day, because meeting after school hours with everything else you have going on, it's not even possible. So, I am just, I'm insanely grateful for your time. It's so good to see you to catch up and I'm honored that you're willing to share your experience and your vast knowledge for our listeners.

[00:39:00] Olivia: And I think we may have some new STEM facilitators, new, yeah, I think you're getting it cooking through this podcast. So, you're an inspiration and I'm just, I'm grateful for you in this world. Thank you, Helen.

[00:39:13] Helen: Well, Olivia, it has been such a pleasure to hear you and, and hear all of your stories. I love somebody who says stories from the trenches because it is. And when you highlight educators that are working in the classroom and with kids every day, I think you have a special niche in our educational environment to be able to lift up voices that are consumed by our jobs. I hope that I've encompassed some other educators that are also working in the trenches but are fueled by the hope that our children give us.

[00:39:47] Helen: So, thank you, Olivia, for spreading that and creating a platform that other people can hear and interact. So, I so appreciate you and the hard work that you do. 

[00:39:57] Olivia: Thanks, friend. Schoolutions is a podcast created, produced, and edited by me, Olivia Wahl. Special thanks to my guest, Helen Corveleyn. Thanks to my older son Benjamin, who created the music that's playing in the background. If you like Schoolutions, please share, rate, review, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @schoolutionspodcast. If you want to reach out, leave me a SpeakPipe voice memo at my website: www.oliviawahl.com/podcast or via email @schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com. Don't forget to talk about us nicely on social media, and please keep listening. Let's continue finding inspiration together.