It’s a good week to promote geoscience education. Not only is it Earth Science Week, but science bloggers everywhere are involved in their annual drive to provide much needed educational resources to US schoolteachers through DonorsChoose. Forcing schools to beg for stuff they need to teach properly as a matter of course seems a sad state of affairs for such a rich country, but you can’t deny that the cause is a worthy one.
We have not set up our own challenge this year, but a number of geology and ocean bloggers have. So each day this Earth Science week, we’ll be giving their efforts a shout-out, and encouraging you to donate to one of the projects that they have endorsed.
First up is Jacquelyn Gill of The Contemplative Mammoth. Jacquelyn says:
As a university educator, I often interact with students at the end of the education pipeline; I’ve seen the consequences of math anxiety or a lack of basic science education first-hand. Donors Choose is a great way to get involved when students are young, when science is a thing of joy and exploration, rather than boredom or frustration as it is for so many college students. If we can give all kids the opportunity to appreciate and enjoy science, we’re not only helping to make sure that the next generation of scientists is as diverse as our citizens, but we’re also ensuring that non-scientists will have a healthy appreciation for the relevance of science to their lives.
Jacquelyn’s challenge page can be found here. One of the projects she is endorsing is a request for funds to buy rocks samples and globes from Mr. Petrofsky, a new teacher with a small budget who would like to use them to “develop passions for learning about life, the formation of the earth, and its sustainability.”
If you donate towards this or another project through Jacquelyn’s page, you also get the change to win a set set of ten custom, hand-drawn, hand-made science-themed marble magnets.
Funky magnets could be yours if you donate more than $5.
Remember: every little helps, and every project funded means more children given a chance to properly learn about science.
Nice plan for content warnings on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Now you need a Mastodon/Fediverse button on this blog.