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Visit the Flying WILD
YouTube Channel
Fun Feathered
Facts
Presidents have not always
had dogs or cats as pets. At least four U.S. Presidents have
had pet Mockingbirds at the Whitehouse including Thomas
Jefferson, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, and Calvin
Coolidge.
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 Bird
City Wisconsin
"Making our communities healthy for
birds...and people"
Steve Kupcho,
experienced teacher, an avid birder, and the current
coordinator for Flying WILD in
Wisconsin through WSO (Wisconsin Society for
Ornithology), recently announced an innovative
initiative taking flight in
Wisconsin.
You've heard of Tree City. Now a
powerful partnership of leading bird organizations in
Wisconsin has established a similar effort to help
birds.
It's called Bird
City Wisconsin, and
communities are invited to apply for recognition
honoring them for their work to protect birds and their
habitat.
Flying
WILD is sponsored in Wisconsin by the Wisconsin Society
for Ornithology and Wisconsin Bird
Conservation Initiative (WBCI) Education
Committee. Both organizations are part of the Bird City
Wisconsin coalition working in close coordination to
deliver the full spectrum of bird conservation
statewide, emphasizing voluntary stewardship.
Bird City Wisconsin
seeks to encourage communities to implement sound bird
conservation practices by offering high visibility
public recognition to those that succeed in doing
so. Andy Paulio is the key WBCI member getting
this off the ground. Andy was also instrumental in
including Flying WILD bird education as
one of the criteria for becoming a recognized "Bird
City."
To be certified,
communities have to meet at least seven criteria. They
range from providing additional bird habitat in parks to
conducting an education program to control free-roaming
cats.
Flying WILD is the first
criteria under public education. Participants
are asked to "demonstrate that schools
in your community participate in Flying
WILD, helping ensure that the nation's students
are knowledgeable about the conservation needs of
migratory and other birds."
Part of the
Bird City Wisconsin mission is to educate the
public about bird conservation issues. The
Flying WILD criteria allows educators
the opportunity to take the lead in bird education on a
statewide level to increase environmental literacy
and stewardship in schools. The Council for
Environmental Education and the Flying WILD National
Office are pleased and honored to be included in
such an ambitious initiative to help Wisconsin educators
achieve broader academic goals. Now, more new
educators in Wisconsin are going to have access to
Flying WILD's hands-on learning about
birds!
The program received
$8,000 from Together Green, which is an alliance between
the National Audubon Society and Toyota Motor Corp., and
$5,000 from the Milwaukee Audubon Society. The Milwaukee
Audubon Society will select the first
five Bird City Wisconsin communities in
2011.Communities receiving the designation will get
street signs showing they are members of Bird City
Wisconsin. Wisconsin's effort is one of the first of its
kind in the nation, and could be a model for states
across the country to adopt.
Congratulations
Steve and your Bird City Wisconsin partners for making
such an innovative, bold move for bird conservation and
education. To learn more about Bird City Wisconsin visit
http://www.birdcitywisconsin.org/Index.htm.
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 Message from the Senior
Manager
The New
Normal
At the Flying
WILD City Partners meeting in San Antonio this
February, City Partners explored new perspectives and
opportunities to advance their Flying WILD program as
our economic realities at every level of society shift
to a new normal. The "new normal"
is a marketing and business term used to describe the
new frugality in consumer behavior as a result of the
downshift in the economy.
Educators are our customers and, like
consumers in other industries, they are seeking to do
more with less.
Their attitudes are changing and they want more
innovation in how their needs are met, more relevance to
their personal and professional lives, and more value
for their changing lifestyle.
To learn more about
what the new normal means for Flying WILD City Partners
looking to innovate, provide more relevance, and add
value to your Flying WILD program, read the marketing
tips section of this issue, training resources to
share, and the "Bird City Wisconsin" feature
article. The inspiring "Bird City
Wisconsin" initiative is taking flight in Wisconsin
and is a great example of innovation by a Flying
WILD City Partner and their coalition of leading bird
organizations in Wisconsin.
This newsletter is
full of stories and creative ideas to help sustain
Flying WILD in your city. We are looking forward to
sharing this special year with you--our Flying WILD City
Partners and your community.
And finally, we are
pleased to welcome an impressive group of new Flying
WILD City Partners to our network. Now we are
33 strong and still growing. Thank you for
your dedicated leadership and passion for birds and
Flying WILD.
Spring is here! Let's embrace
the "new normal," think outside the box, and have
great fun with Flying WILD!
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City Partner Meeting In San
Antonio
 What a fantastic 2010 meeting in
San Antonio! New and veteran City Partners learned,
taught, shared, networked, exchanged ideas, generated
new approaches and were inspired by the discussions and
meeting
events.
Our focus this year was on how
to build a better Flying WILD
facilitator network and how to nurture
that network. We explored localizing Flying
WILD activities and connecting with local bird species
in your community. New approaches to
communications and marketing the program to facilitators
and educators were outlined. We also
discussed new ways to integrate service learning,
community service, and citizen science activities into
your Flying WILD program. Partnering with universities
to reach pre-service educators and partnering with local
businesses for fundraising opportunities was also
highlighted. We even learned a new bird exercise
activity from Mary Ann Weber, Houston Audubon Society,
based on the Flying WILD "Avian Antics" activity, which
you can now see on the Flying WILD YouTube channel.
Thank
you to all the Flying WILD City Partners who attended
the 2010 meeting. Your active participation and
enthusiasm for the program is reflective of the whole
Flying WILD City Partners' network. We missed all of you
who could not attend. We know you really wanted to be
there. Ideas and discussion notes generated from the
meeting sessions will be distributed via the City
Partner listserv and in a special password protected
section of the Flying WILD website.
This new section will include a press
kit to assist Flying WILD City Partners in promoting the
program and communicating with local media,
superintendents, facilitators and educators. In all, it
was a productive good time with great company!
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Welcome
New City Partners!
The Flying WILD
network continues to grow its flock with the addition
of four new City Partners, bringing our network up
to a grand total of 33 cities!
Cibolo
Nature Center
Located
about 30 miles northwest of San Antonio, The Cibolo
Nature Center is 100 acres of Hill Country trails and
wilderness. Open to the public since Earth Day
1990, the Cibolo Nature Center provides education,
research, entertainment and outdoor activities for more
than 100,000 visitors a year, while promoting sound
stewardship of land, water and wildlife.
Thousands of volunteer hours have made the
Cibolo Nature Center a prime example of community caring
and an excellent model of a local community's efforts to
preserve its natural heritage. www.cibolo.org
Fossil Rim Wildlife Center
Fossil Rim
Wildlife Center is dedicated
to conservation of species in peril, scientific
research, training of professionals, creative management
of natural resources, and impactful public education. As
a dedicated Conservation Center for Species Survival,
Fossil Rim provides a diversity of compelling learning
experiences which invoke positive change in the way
people think, feel and act environmentally.
Fossil Rim's public education initiatives include
programs and workshops targeted toward non-formal,
pre-service and in-service educators, and home school
parents. www.fossilrim.org
Jenkinson's
Aquarium is a privately owned facility located on the
boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, NJ. Opening in June
of 1991, Jenkinson's Aquarium has proven to be a
valuable educational and recreational resource, as
evidenced by its growing popularity. The aquarium is
dedicated to educating the public on all aspects of
marine life and conservation. Each exhibit is designed
to promote awareness of the animals, their habitats and
conservation. www.jenkinsons.com
The Newark Museum operates, as
it has since its founding, in the public trust as a
museum of service, and a leader in connecting objects
and ideas to the needs and wishes of its constituencies.
The
Newark Museum believes that their
art and science collections have the power to
educate, inspire and transform individuals of all ages,
and the local, regional, national and international
communities that thet serve. In the words of
founding Director John Cotton Dana, "A good museum
attracts, entertains, arouses curiosity, leads to
questioning-and thus promotes learning."
www.newarkmuseum.org
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 Marketing Tips and
Tools
The "New Normal" in
marketing requires
Innovation, Relevance,
and Value-added.
The business
landscape as we knew it is gone and all of us have been
affected at some level. Environmental
education, like other industries is in the painful
process of reconciling an economy built on perceived
value with its actual value. The landscape that emerges
will be vastly different from anything we have
experienced.
But for those who see opportunity through the
haze, the future is rich with possibility if we can
innovate, identify relevance, and add value to our
programs.
- Link Flying WILD to a personal benefit
for educators if possible.
- Speak to educators
using their own words to describe Flying WILD.
- Understand that Flying WILD isn't just
about bird education concerns.
- Tell educators the
story behind your Flying WILD program and why it is
relevant.
- Connect "value"
with Flying WILD in the current economic
downturn.
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 Celebrate Spring with the
Birds!
Remember
Earth Day is April 22 and International
Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) is May 8th this year. Both are
great opportunities to add a Flying WILD workshop to your
program
schedule.
Spring
Workshops
Include Flying WILD workshops and
activities in your community's upcoming Earth Day and
IMBD events and celebrations with a special workshop
for community youth leaders and educators. Remember to
send the Flying WILD National Office any additions to
your workshop schedule. You don't have to go big --
remind facilitators and local educators to celebrate the
birds with Flying WILD activities in their school,
community youth programs, and classrooms.
Host
an AM Coffee Break with the
Birds
Start a new
tradition in your community for Earth
Day and IMBD. You and your
facilitators may want to add free guided bird walks in
the AM at your site, a local park, at your local
wildlife refuge, or a local designated birding spot
during spring migration. Partner with a bird friendly
coffee vendor or your local coffee shop and provide
free coffee for your Spring AM bird walks. It is a great
way to promote your upcoming Flying WILD workshops and
encourage local coffee vendors to partner with you to
support environmental education.
Be sure to list the
spring migrants you are likely to see. It is a great way
to build interests in bird watching and show educators
how easy it is to learn and teach their students to bird
watch with little or no experience. Remember to invite
families and the whole community to a coffee break with
the birds.
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 Flying WILD & EETAP: Building and
Strengthening the Flying WILD City Partner
Network
The Flying WILD
program made its debut in summer of 2004 with the
publication of Flying WILD: An Educator's Guide to
Celebrating Birds. Shortly after that historic
event, the Council for Environmental Education (CEE)
began working with partnering organizations throughout
North America to build a national distribution network
for Flying WILD materials and training: the Flying WILD
City Partner network. This effort was made possible in
large part though CEE's and Flying WILD's participation
in the Environmental Education and Training Partnership
(EETAP).
EETAP is a national leader in the delivery of
environmental education training for education
professionals and is funded by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Education
through a cooperative agreement with the University of
Wisconsin-Stevens Point. The third phase of the
EETAP program, which began in 2005, provides funding for
a five-year period, ending in 2010. By
participating in EETAP since 2005, Flying WILD has
received support each year for providing continued
professional development opportunities for Flying WILD
City Partners, such as facilitator training for new City
Partners. More recently, CEE applied funding to also
host the annual Flying WILD City Partner meeting. This
meeting is key to the continued development of the
Flying WILD program and to meeting the need for ongoing
professional development for Flying WILD City Partners.
EETAP funding also enabled CEE to issue travel stipends
for City Partners to attend the meeting and to provide
mini start-up grants to new City Partner
organizations. To date, most of the support
for Flying WILD from EETAP was through funds earmarked
for strengthening environmental education training
networks. Over the past two years, Flying WILD also
began participation in the EETAP activity known as
"Correlations." The Correlations funds have allowed CEE
to provide small competitive grants to Flying WILD City
Partners to correlate Flying WILD activities to state
education standards and, in one case, scouting
standards. As the final product of a Correlations grant,
City Partners produce a document or database that
enables educators to quickly identify how they can meet
education standards through use of Flying WILD
activities. With access to such resources,
educators are then more likely to enroll in Flying WILD
professional development workshops and more likely to
use Flying WILD in their classrooms and nonformal
settings. You can find more information
about the many activities conducted by EETAP partners
along with resources for environmental educators, course
offerings, and EETAP evaluation reports at http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=rhl4t6cab.0.0.cvohqmcab.0&ts=S0473&p=http%3A%2F%2Feetap.org%2F&id=preview. |
 Training Resources to
Share
Like humans-and unlike most
species-songbirds learn the vocalizations they make,
primarily form their parents. Discover how scientists
are applying the results of birdsong studies to
how people learn to speak. Click on "birds" at www.nwf.org/nw.
Spring
Citizen Science Project
Introduce educators
and their students to global environmental
monitoring.
http://watch.birds.cornell.edu/nest/home/index
Gardening for
Birds
Help educators and students garden for
birds. This
site provides a list of plants by region.
http://www.birdzilla.com/gardening-for-birds.html
Make Your Own Bird
Field Guide
Create as many books
as you wish with as many birds in each.
http://www.whatbird.com/registration/mag/make-a-guide.aspx
If you have a
favorite resource to share in the Flying WILD
newsletter, send to flisascee@aol.com.
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New Flying WILD
Listservs
In an effort to
create better service to our growing network of bird
educators and Flying WILD City Partners, new listservs
have been created. These listservs will be used to
provide updates on Flying WILD developments, educator
resources, activity ideas, funding, and much
more.
This list is for all
bird education professionals to share and communicate
information and resources on bird education related
topics in addition to receiving the BEN Buletin.
This list is for Flying WILD City Partners
for the purpose of Flying WILD business and sharing
of resources.
Flying WILD Educator
listserv: educator@lists.flyingwild.org
This list is
for individuals that have participated in
Flying WILD training so that they too can
share Flying WILD activity ideas and resources.
Flying WILD City Partners are encouraged
to have educators attending their workshops sign up for
the birded listserv (birdedlist-join@lists.flyingwild.org) and the educator listserv
(educator-join@lists.flyingwild.org).
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Coming
Soon!
A new password
protected "City Partner Corner" will be
available shortly on the Flying WILD website. This corner will
provide City Partner private access to additional Flying
Wild resources and support not available to the public.
A
New
Flying WILD Media Kit is now in development.
Ideas generated at the Flying WILD City Partner meeting
in San Antonio will fill this kit with useful marketing
material to help you communicate your Flying WILD
program to local media, school superintendents,
community, parents, and
educators. |
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 New
Resource for Bird Education with Young
Children
The Council for
Environmental Education has recently
launched an early childhood
initiative designed to help educators and
caregivers engage young children, ages 3-7, in
activities connected to nature.
Growing Up WILD is an early
childhood education program that builds on children's
sense of wonder about nature and invites them to
explore wildlife and the world around them. Through a
wide range of activities and experiences, Growing Up
WILD provides an early foundation for developing
positive impressions about nature and lifelong social
and cognitive skills.
Growing Up WILD features a host of
activities that can aid bird educators featuring fun
crafts, art projects, conservation
activities, reading and math connections, and much
more. Activities include "Bird Beak Buffet,"
where children learn about the special functions of
bird beaks; "Terrific Turkeys," where children
learn about wild turkeys; and "Owl Pellets," where
children dissect an owl pellet and learn what owls
eat.
New Flying WILD City Partner Bonnie Ervin,
Elementary Education Coordinator at Discovery Center at
MurfreeSpring in Murfreesboro, TN has already added
value to her Flying WILD program with the addition of
Growing Up WILD. Bonnie successfully
conducted their first Growing Up WILD training
in February for facilitators from the Murfreesboro,
Nashville area.
To order Growing Up WILD: Exploring
Nature with Young Children, visit
www.projectwild.org/order.htm,
or to learn more about becoming a training parter call
the Council for Environmental Education at
713-520-1936.
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