Learn about connecting with landscape and community!

Over the past few years, I’ve worked with educator Mollie Parsons to develop lesson plans for New Mexico middle school students based around our environmental programming. She’s created lessons about everything from the impacts of climate change on wildlife to environmental careers in New Mexico. Now, we have three new plans based on a show we aired this summer, Loving Our Changing Homelands and featuring Paula Garcia, executive director of the New Mexico Acequia Association, and Theresa Pasqual and Aaron Lowden from the Pueblo of Acoma. 

You can check out all our middle school lesson plans on the PBS LearningMedia website but the three latest lesson plans include: 

• Mapping Ourselves and Our World – Students will reflect on their own connections to the world around them and consider the many ways of understanding where they live, what they need to have a healthy community, and the roles they choose to play in the world around them. As part of this lesson plan, students will think about their roles in their families and communities and explore their identities and relationships. They will also consider what aspects of their communities might be under threat, and what solutions they might consider developing and acting upon.

• For the Future: Seeds, Food, and Culture – Learn about the importance of seeds and how and why people in the arid Southwest select seeds for certain traits, including drought durability. Students will also consider what seeds or foods are important to their own families and cultures and consider how knowledge is passed from generation to generation. 

• Stewardship in the Schoolyard – Students will explore their own watersheds to become better stewards of the lands and waters they rely upon. They will also learn how to slow water in their schoolyards or neighborhoods to help water infiltrate the ground and recharge local aquifers. 

If you click on the individual tiles for the lessons, you’ll see that each includes videos, information about the state/federal standards, handouts, and a lesson plan guide for teachers. If you have any questions, let me know — and please pass this news along to teachers you know. 

A huge thank you to Mollie Parsons of Cerise Consultants for creating the lesson plans and to NMPBS’s Myah Wilmarth for making them accessible and available online. And you don’t have to be a teenager to learn something new! Visit the Our Land page on PBS LearningMedia and have some fun! 

News to read:

• “Wolf dies after Colorado Parks and Wildlife completes capture of pack tied to livestock killings” (Ali Longwell, Vail Daily)

• “New Mexico first state to offer residents up-front energy efficiency rebates” (Rodd Cayton, City Desk ABQ)

• “New Mexico AG seeks contempt hearing; adds landowners to streams access suit” (Danielle Prokop, Source NM)

• “In This Tiny New Mexico Town, the Air Quality Is Worse Than in Downtown L.A.” (Jerry Redfern, Capital & Main)

• “Everyone agrees: Big data gaps remain as state explores brackish water market” (Patrick Lohmann, Source NM)

• “Two county water systems ‘making history’ with alliance” (Geoffrey Plant, Taos News)

• “Water violations here mostly paperwork” (Juno Ogle, Silver City Daily Press)

• “State says new consent order adds ‘accountability’ to LANL cleanup” (Alaina Mencinger, Santa Fe New Mexican)

• “Something’s Poisoning America’s Land. Farmers Fear ‘Forever’ Chemicals.” (Hiroki Tabuchi, The New York Times)

• “Surprising New Research Links Infant Mortality to Crashing Bat Populations” (Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times)

• “Our Very Strange Search for ‘Sea Level’” (Brooke Jarvis, The New Yorker)

The Center for Biological Diversity is offering a $15,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever shot and killed an endangered California Condor west of McPhee Reservoir in Montezuma County, Colorado. The birds are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act. According to a press release from the nonprofit environmental group: 

“California condors are still a recovering species. In 2022 there were only an estimated 347 California condors alive in the wild. They very rarely enter Colorado while moving between southeast Utah and Arizona. Colorado Parks and Wildlife indicated that condors have entered Colorado once or twice in a decade. The most recent sighting the agency was aware of was in 2015 near Mesa Verde National Park.” The birds have a wingspan of almost ten feet and they can live for 60 years. 

Anyone with information regarding the incident should contact the Colorado Operation Game Thief Hotline at 1-877-COLO-OGT (1-877-265-6648), by email at game.thief@state.co.us, or online at Submit a Tip. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also has a Tip Line at 844-397-8477 and online at Submit a Tip. Callers can remain anonymous.

Lastly, free COVID tests are coming back. At the end of September, people will again be able to order four free tests per household through COVIDTests.gov.