Project Ice: A report from the first teacher cohort with AMS Education & COLDEX

Data from polar ice cores play a central role in understanding the links between atmospheric greenhouse gases and global climate. In a partnership with COLDEX, an NSF integrated science and technology center focused on finding and recovering ice older than 800,000 years, the AMS Education program offers an opportunity for K-12 teachers to learn about paleoclimatology with researchers from the polar science communities. “Project Ice,” following a similar AMS Education model from other longstanding summer courses, held its first successful summer residency program with eleven teachers in 2023 at Oregon State University. It was a pilot offering designed to engage teachers who already had a known relationship with AMS Education, soliciting their feedback on how this course could evolve with larger, more diverse cohorts. This professional development program funded each of the teacher’s travel and room and board to meet with COLDEX scientists, postdoctoral and graduate students who presented their discoveries, and provided instruction on polar science. Prior to their arrival, teachers completed a multi-week array of asynchronous, online learning modules in paleoclimatology through a partnership with Pennsylvania Western University. Once the full cohort was on-site, teachers worked through various hands-on learning activities to augment the online learning. Teachers were tasked with a mission to improve and troubleshoot existing modules, while proposing new learning activities and pedagogical techniques for learning about polar science. The larger cohort was partitioned into small groups for various other learning opportunities, including “Ice Jam” sessions where teachers reflected on their learning and attempted to find ways to incorporate this emerging science into their own local curriculum.

Preliminary evaluation results from the 2023 cohort and their feedback to AMS and COLDEX will be presented in this paper with summative statistics and suggestions for improvement. Moreover, specific learning modules and proposed pedagogical techniques will be shared from this group of K-12 teachers.