For the past two years, advance CTE partnered with the delaware department of education (ddoe) and delaware environmental literacy community of practice to develop an environmental literacy…

For the past two years, advance CTE partnered with the delaware department of education (ddoe) and delaware environmental literacy community of practice to develop an environmental literacy framework that can be used alongside the national career clusters framework to embed environmental competencies in CTE programs and pathways as well as other interdisciplinary academic areas at the middle and high school level. The framework identifies a set of environmental literacy competencies applicable to career clusters and supports students in developing their unique environmental identity. There is now a need to build a pipeline of highly qualified educators to deliver environmental education via the framework. This project will offer targeted professional development that offers a more comprehensive implementation of environmental literacy concepts in the CTE curriculum. This training will help ensure that teachers feel confident and capable in integrating the competencies into their high school career pathways program of study. Another area of opportunity is to effectively integrate mwees in the middle grades. Delaware has been working to revamp middle grade education to include more exploration and hands-on learning in conjunction with academic rigor. This approach aims to increase students self-awareness, career awareness, and connection to their community (https://delawarepathways.ORG/middle-grades/). Filling the PD GAP allows US to build educator capacity, so all students have access to environmental education.