Embrace the Earth Live STEM Event
Embrace The Earth – Live STEM Event for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Middle School Students
Keeping your kids engaged and interested with distance learning can be a struggle. To help address that, CSD Learns and RIT/NTID partnered together to provide an exciting deaf education resource: a live STEM event for deaf and hard of hearing middle school students to celebrate Earth Day 2020.
You can now view this live event on-demand with your students! It’s a fantastic way to get your middle-school-age children excited about science, technology, engineering, and math.
Parents, teachers and students – don’t miss out on this fun and FREE online education resource!
This Earth Day event focused on how we can reduce our impact on the environment. Host, Mick Posner, a deaf educator at a public high school and a community college, along with four deaf and hard of hearing STEM professionals, guide students through a series of interactive STEM activities that can easily be done at home!
The recording features ASL-interpreted instruction, as well as captions, so it is fully accessible to all who wish to participate.
Engage students with exciting STEM-focused activities lead by Deaf role models! Use our Teacher Toolkits to extend the lessons!
This serves as a great resource for parents and educators who are in the process of transitioning to online teaching. It will also give your deaf and hard of hearing students a chance to learn from deaf and hard of hearing role models.
Embrace the Earth Teachers Toolkit
In addition to our Earth Day live STEM event, we worked with RIT/NTID to create a series of STEM activities, resources , and lesson plans that can be easily used at home and through online teaching.
In this Teacher’s Toolkit, you will find a week’s worth of instructional content and lesson plans that will supplement what is covered in the live STEM event. Throughout the Toolkit’s presentation material, you will find videos of Mick Posner, the host of the live STEM event, explaining concepts of Earth Day in an engaging fashion.
Our Embrace the Earth Toolkit features five distinct lesson plans. Learn more about each below:
Day One: The History of Earth Day
Introduce your students to Earth Day and its history
Day Two: What is a Carbon Footprint
Teach about the impact of carbon footprints on the environment and how it can be reduced.
Day Three: The Greenhouse Effect
Demonstrate the ways heat is trapped in the air and how carbon dioxide can be reduced.
Day Four: The Three R’s – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle
Start students on understanding the ways to improve the environment.
Day Five: Meet Our Role Models
Finish up the week by meeting the deaf and hard of hearing role models working in a field that directly impacts our environment.
Meet The Panelists
Song Hoa Choi: Statistician
Song is currently working as an information analyst at two different sites: National Center for Deaf Health Research and Dye Lab in the University of Rochester Medical Center. She graduated from Gallaudet University with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and from Oregon State University with a master’s in statistics.
Amie Sankoh: Plant Biologist
Amie is a PhD candidate in the Biochemistry & Cellular and Molecular Biology department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Prior to pursuing her PhD, Amie earned an associate of applied science degree in laboratory science technology and a BS in biochemistry from Rochester Institute of Technology.
Barbara Spiecker: Marine Biologist
Barbara is a PhD candidate in marine biology and teaches undergraduate Introduction to Biology at Oregon State University. She earned her MS in marine biology from Northeastern University and a BS in biology from Rochester Institute of Technology. She is also a co-founder of Atomic Hands.
Dr. Alicia Wooten: Research Immunologist
Alicia’s love of science led her to study Biomedical Sciences at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She completed a post-baccalaureate program at the University of Rochester to gain more experience and study HIV in the brain. She currently teaches biology at Gallaudet University and is the co-founder of Atomic Hands.