Mount Washington Observatory's Arctic Wednesdays Professional Development for Teachers

Mount Washington Observatory's Arctic Wednesdays professional development program is an immersive experience in which educators visit Mount Washington Observatory in wintertime, taking part in weather data collection, distance education, and an opportunity to harness Mount Washington's extreme environment for student-based learning.

Over the past three years of the program the education team at Mount Washington Observatory has conducted dozens of exciting and creative learning experiences for teachers looking to learn first-hand about weather and climate as they join weather observers on their weekly commute to the top of the Northeast. Along the way, participants get to witness the distinct changes in ecosystems as they ascend the mountain and have the opportunity to sample data at a variety of checkpoints. Once at the summit, educators can explore the summit, tour the weather station, sit-in on “shift-change meeting” to learn what’s involved in running a mountaintop weather station, and connect live with their classrooms using the Observatory’s distance learning system to share the highlights of the expedition so far with their students.

Each program is tailored to the participants, and as conditions on the mountain dictate, teachers are able to pick and choose from the Observatory’s educational programs. Offerings include support for teachers to conduct experiments on the summit, sending a traveling educator to the classroom, conducting distance learning connections with summit weather observers before or after the program, or field trips to the Observatory’s Weather Discovery Center museum in North Conway, New Hampshire.

Teachers, and indirectly their students, who participate in the program are able to develop meaningful relationships with scientists living and working on Mt. Washington as they interact before, during and after their trip. Teachers are able to integrate their adventure and personal learning into their classroom teaching immediately and with flexibility. As the program heads into its fourth year, the staff at Mount Washington Observatory has collected a wide variety of valuable data through student projects and teacher experiences that use stunning photography, videos and multimedia, teacher blogs and assessments, and student reflections.

Arctic Wednesdays represents a unique opportunity to link classroom teachers and their students with informal educators and atmospheric scientists. Attendees of this presentation will learn strategies for developing and adapting STEM teacher professional development programs that use experiential and distance learning to teach concepts in extreme weather, alpine ecology, instrumentation and data science.