Certification 101 You Can Become a Certified Environmental Educator

All right, well, it is three o'clock. So just to be thankful for your time, we'll go ahead and get started. First, a big hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us for our very first webinar in our monthly webinar series of 2019. I am Lisa Edens. I am the program coordinator for the Colorado Alliance. And today to kick off our webinar series, we're gonna be talking about, the webinar is called Certification 101. You can become a certified environmental educator. Before we get started, I just wanted to give you a brief introduction to the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education. If you're not familiar with us, we are the professional association for environmental education in Colorado that we try to bring together all those who are working to educate Coloradans about the environment, where they live and the decisions they make. And we are a network of over 150 educators and reaching every corner of the state. And together our members reach more than 800,000 learners in Colorado. So we're pretty proud of that. Our mission, as you can see, is to advance environmental education in Colorado by fostering collaboration, mobilizing support and driving excellence. And one of the ways that we hope to drive excellence is through our monthly webinar series. And so we try to choose topics of interest to the environmental education community. And our goals are really to share and spark ideas among one another, to improve our practice overall and to just have a chance to connect with one another. And I know sometimes that's hard to do via webinars, but it is a way that we can kind of reach a statewide audience here. Just a quick bit about our next webinar. We'll be next month, Tuesday, February 26th at 3 p.m. And that webinar will be on walking field trips, mapping outdoor instruction opportunities. And we do have more information about that webinar as well as registration up on our website if you're interested. And then if you have an idea, we would love to hear what it is. Like I said, we get ideas from you all about ideas and topics of interest. So please shoot us ideas if you have a topic that you'd like to hear about and we can try to find a speaker for you. Just a couple more housekeeping things. We wanted to quickly thank our webinar series sponsor, Endeavor, without whose support we couldn't do these webinars. So a big thank you to them. And then finally, as you can see, we're on the Zoom webinar platform. I'm not sure if people are familiar with this platform. We've been using it for about a year or so, but we've muted all of the lines. And if you could just keep yourself muted throughout the duration of the webinar just to minimize background noise, that would be great. Our primary way of communicating with you is gonna be through the chat function. So you can see that it's either at the bottom of your screen or it could be on a sidebar, depending on what browser and computer you're using. But feel free, we'd love for you to interact with us during the webinar today or with each other. So feel free, you can send a message just to Katie and I as presenters, or you can send an email to everyone. If you have, or sorry, not an email, a chat to everybody. If you have a question or a link that you wanna share, a comment, whatever, please feel free to use that chat function. So without further ado, I will pass it on to Katie Naven. Katie's our executive director and a expert in our certification program. So take it away, Katie. And I will just be monitoring for questions throughout the presentation today. I'll be helping Katie with those questions. So keep them coming in and we'll either hold them to the end or we'll pop them in throughout. Great, thanks, Lisa. And welcome everybody. I'm always excited to talk about certification. It's a program that I actually, my first interaction with CAE was joining the certification committee to develop this program. And then I went through it myself and submitted a portfolio and now help manage the program. So hopefully I can answer any questions that you have. And as Lisa said, feel free to type those into the chat as you have them so we can answer them as we go. But I will go ahead and jump right in and talk a little bit about our program. And hopefully this will give you a little bit of background on how the program works and what things you might need to be thinking about as you put your portfolio together. But as always, we are available as resources for questions or anything that comes up along the way. So what is Colorado EE Certification? Our program is competency-based and it's based on the North American Association for Environmental Education Guidelines for Excellence for the preparation and professional development of environmental educators, which is quite the mouthful. But that's as part of a set of national guidelines and best practices that really outline what we as environmental educators should know and be able to do. And in Colorado, we actually took those guidelines and created a set of Colorado-specific guidelines. So you will notice the way the certification program is organized. If you're familiar with those national guidelines, we moved a few things around, but all the same information is there. It is a portfolio-based program. So we wanted to make this really flexible so that you can use evidence from your body of work, things that you've done as part of your experience, and not have to recreate something just for the sake of a certification. So you are putting together a series of pieces of evidence that demonstrate those competencies, and every portfolio is gonna look a little bit different and have slightly different elements so that it can be based on your personal experience. There are several levels of certification. We're gonna talk about two of them today, the certified level and the master-certified level. We actually have another level that is in pilot stage, an apprentice level, which is more for folks who are just entering the field, high school, early college students, maybe seasonals or folks who are working in summer camps, those types of things. It's a very entry-level certification that we're piloting. So we can talk offline if you want more information about that. But today we'll be focusing on the certified level and the master-certified level. As a little bit of background, we began developing those Colorado Guidelines for Excellence in 2005, and focused on developing the program until 2008. 2008 was our pilot year. We certified eight people that first year and have been running the program now for just a little bit over 10 years. And we now have 124 certified environmental educators in the state, which is really exciting. There are about 14 different states that have certification programs in the country. Colorado is one of them, and we're one of only three of those programs that are actually accredited by the North American Association for Environmental Education. And what that means is we met a high bar that was set by NAAE, and it makes your certification at the master level transferable to any state that you might move to. The states that also have certification programs, there is a reciprocity system so that if you move to any of these states, we can easily connect you and get you on their list of certified environmental ed. So let's talk a little bit about why to get certified. There are lots of reasons, and it's gonna be a little bit different for everybody, but certification is something that can help you demonstrate that you have strong foundations in environmental literacy. It's something that you can put on your resume, in your body of work to share with the world what your qualifications are. Certifications are very different than certificates or degrees in that you actually have to demonstrate use of those competencies and your mastery of those competencies, whereas maybe in a course, it's more based on completion of the course. So a certification demonstrates that higher level of that. You can position yourself for success within the environmental education field. Like I said, this is a great thing to put on your resume to think about as you're changing positions, moving careers, thinking about promotion. While I don't have any hard evidence on it, I would say I've heard anecdotally that this is one of the first things people have asked about on a resume is tell me about this certification. So it's definitely something that employers can use. You can become a part of a network of highly qualified environmental educators in the state. Like I said, there are now 124 of us who have high knowledge and skills and be able to interact with those folks and build the network and the credibility of the field in the state. And then finally, most importantly, I think, is that certification is a way to personalize your own professional development. This is a self-guided process. So for things that you're really strong in and that you feel really good about, you don't have to spend as much time there. For areas where you feel like you need more work, you need more time to reflect on those things, you can really spend more time and focus on those areas. For me, the biggest benefit of going through certification personally was the ability to reflect back on my own work. It was an opportunity to say, oh yeah, that's why I do that. That's why this is part of my practice. Things that have become pretty routine, it allows you to think about why that's good education practice and why you should do that. And then it also allows you to really sit back and reflect and say, why am I not doing this? Is there a way that I could be inserting this competency more strongly into my programming and into my instruction? So in terms of self-reflection, it's a really powerful way to do that. And I would say that is the number one reason to participate and go through. So to go through the process, what knowledge and skills do you need to demonstrate? What goes into a portfolio? There are basically five themes and these themes are the same in both the certified level and the master certified level. You just have to provide different levels of evidence and understanding in each level. So those themes are environmental literacy. That's what do you know personally? What do you know about natural and social systems? What do you know about investigating environmental literacy? What are your own personal skills that allow you to be able to teach about the environment? Foundations of EE is really the goals, foundations and the history of the field and some of that background knowledge that you may have gotten through a formal education program or you may not have, depending on how you came into the field. Professional responsibilities of environmental education is all about your practice. How do you demonstrate strong and ethical behavior as an environmental educator? Planning and implementing EE is probably the meatiest theme and that, how are you putting together lesson plans? What do you know about learners? What are the different methods of teaching that you might use? All of those pieces that go together in how do I deliver my instruction really fit into that. And then finally, and this is the one that I would say gets the stickiest is assessment and evaluation. And how do we know what our learners are learning? And this is the one people struggle with the most and the one that I think the field in general struggles with the most. So we'll talk a little bit more in detail about what we're really looking at. So those are overall the five overarching themes. If you're applying for certification at the certified level, you have to demonstrate an overall understanding of the theme. There may be competencies within that theme that you are really strong with and there may be ones that you don't have as much experience in and that's okay. In the master certified level, we're really looking that you have experience in each one of those sub competencies within each of those. So there's a lot more detail and a lot more meat to the master level certification. We'll talk a little bit more about that and hopefully that makes sense. When we look at the themes and those sub competencies and the competencies that fall within those themes, I think it's easiest if you have a chance to play with them and move them around and get your hands on them a little bit, which is a little hard to do over a webinar. So we're gonna experiment a little bit. You can either visit this tiny URL here, cut and paste that into a browser. I am going to type it into the chat so it's easy to cut and paste for you here in just a second. You can also, if you wanna do this on your phone, you can take a picture of that QR code and the link will show up right on your phone so you can go quickly to that link. And we're just gonna play a little online game and hopefully you'll play with me so that you can get to see some of those sub competencies and play with them. So that URL is in the chat box and we're gonna go there right now. All right, so when you get there, you are gonna see all of the sub competencies up on the screen. And hopefully you can see them up on my screen if you are not on that screen directly. But we're gonna start with the first theme, environmental literacy. And one of the sub competencies that falls within that theme is processes of addressing environmental issues. So I'm gonna give you about 30 seconds or so and try and click the things that you think also fall into that category of environmental literacy, into that theme. Which of these competencies might fit there? And Katie, we're just still seeing your PowerPoint. I wasn't sure if you wanted to show us the web page. I did, it is up on my screen. So let me see here. Can you see it now, Lisa? Yep, got it now. Great. So you can see I clicked this processes of addressing environmental issues and take a few seconds to see if you can identify any of these other competencies that might also fall under environmental literacy. And if you're on your own screen, you can click those boxes and it'll tell you if you're right or not. All right, other ones that might fit into this category include questioning analysis and interpretation skills, knowledge of environmental processes and systems, and personal and civic responsibility. Theme two is all about the foundations of environmental education. So one of the categories that fits in there is how EE is implemented. There are three more. So take a few seconds and see if you can identify which of those competencies might fit into that theme of foundations of environmental. All right, other competencies that might fit in this theme in the foundations of EE other than how EE is implemented include knowledge of environmental education, materials and resources, fundamental characteristics and goals of environmental education, and the evolution of the field of environmental education. That's all part of that second theme. Theme three only has two competencies and that's in the professional responsibilities for environmental education. One of those is exemplary EE practice. And take a few seconds and see if you can identify the other that fits into that group. If you picked ongoing learning and professional development, you are correct. Theme four, like I said, is a very meaty theme. There's lots in there in terms of planning and implementing environmental education. One of those pieces is making sure there's an emphasis on education, not advocacy. But take a few seconds and think about what else might fit into that group of planning and implementing EE. Click the boxes that you think might fit. All right. One of those that you might have found in that group is knowledge about learners and learning and understanding your learners' needs and their learning styles. Knowledge of various teaching methods, knowing different ways to deliver material. Creating a climate for learning and exploring the environment and that includes everything from risk management to creating a safe emotional environment and using appropriate questioning strategies and being culturally responsive fits into that category. And then finally, the last one in this group is planning for instruction. And do you include the objectives and goals and do you accomplish something that you've set out to accomplish in your lesson outline or program? Last theme, we'll just go through this one together since this is all that's left, but it includes learner outcomes in assessment and evaluation. That's the theme we're working on. And not just that you have them, but that those learner outcomes match what your assessments for your lesson program outline, whatever you may be working on is. You would be surprised how many programs and lesson outlines out there there are that don't match and their goal may be to connect people to nature, but their assessment is about identifying trees and they don't line up. So that's an important piece. Assessment that is part of instruction, that's what happens while you're teaching, could be very informal like questioning strategies or games that give you hints as to whether your learners are coming along with you and are getting the material that you're sharing with them. Improving instruction is all about using those assessment and evaluation results and what changes do you make. And then finally, evaluating programming. And it is important to note that when we talk about assessment and evaluation, we are talking about two different things. We're talking about learner assessment. So how do I know that an individual learner knows what I wanted them to know? And when we talk about evaluation, we're talking about program evaluation. How do I know that the program is doing what I want it to do? And you may use several different assessments, learner assessments within a program evaluation to tell you, give you a clue if it's meeting its goals. So know that we are making that distinction and that's something that a distinction you should make within your portfolio as well. Great. Well, hopefully you got a chance to click some buttons and play with those a little bit. I think it's not really about whether they end up in the right category or not. It's more about thinking about what they mean and where they go. There are several of those that you could land in different categories. So it is worth taking some time to really think about what each of those mean before you dive in. So you can identify what you already have that really demonstrates those. So here's the list of them all together. I wanted to go through individually and talk a little bit about what might you provide in a portfolio that might demonstrate some of those competencies? What might you include as evidence? So starting with theme one, if we think about things you might include, and these are only a few examples, there are probably many that you could list in terms of things to include in your portfolio. These are things like an essay on inquiry can really help with demonstrating questioning analysis and interpretation skills. At the master level, papers on research can really demonstrate how you use your own questioning analysis and interpretation skills. We get a lot of transcripts to demonstrate knowledge of environmental processes and systems or lists of classes and coursework that you have taken. Know that we are not, we don't need anything official. We just want to, we will trust you when you tell us you have taken what you have taken. But that's something that people will use a lot. People will include in their issue investigation, a lot of times they will talk about the different environmental systems and social systems that are wrapped up in that issue. And so they'll use those types of papers and essays to demonstrate that as well. In terms of the processes of addressing environmental issues, one thing that I think is really important to note and where people get stuck on a lot is a lot of the issue investigations that we get, people will pick a local issue to dive into and understand and they will focus on the natural parts and the measuring of the problem and what is impacted as a result of that issue. What are the results on the environment? We also want you to focus on, and it's really important that you also include the stakeholder perspective. What do people think should be done about this issue and what do they believe about it and why? And how do we think about solutions from a perspective of taking into account those multiple perspectives on what can be done about an issue? So if you do have like a really great paper from a college course or something like that where you are addressing an environmental issue, you may have to add on to it if one of those pieces are missing, but make sure that in some way we get to see all of those pieces. And then personal and civic responsibility, how are you being personally and civically responsible? And that can look any number of ways in terms of we get a lot of essays that will answer that question. We'll get different evidence of participation in civic activity, those types of things. Please know that any evidence you include in your portfolio, you don't need one piece of evidence for every competency. You may have a piece of evidence that covers three competencies. And as long as you tell us where to go and what you're using that evidence for, we can line that up and take a look at that. Know that one essay might meet multiple of these things or one piece of evidence. Foundations of EE is we generally get a lot of essays that demonstrate the fundamental characteristics and goals of EE. We do ask that you cite those goals from one of the founding documents of EE. And we will get, environmental education is one of those very intuitive fields. So we have gotten a lot of essays in the past that describe the goals from an individual or a personal point of view. But know that we do wanna know that you know a little bit about the history and where those goals came from. So be sure to cite something there. In how EE is implemented, we're looking for things like, what types of partners do you engage with? Where can you find resources? Evolution of the field of EE is definitely covered more heavily in the master level than it is in the certified level. And we wanna make sure, at the master level, we wanna know a little bit about the history of EE, but we also wanna know a little bit about the future and what new research is out there and how you're using that. Knowledge of EE materials and resources, a great piece of evidence to include would be to use the guidelines for excellence in environmental education materials and look at a resource and review it. Where does it meet the guidelines? Where does it not meet the guidelines? That's a really great way to meet that competency. Really great example. Professional responsibilities of EE, we do ask for a signed code of ethics in this theme. You'll find that on the website. And all you have to do is sign it and include it in your portfolio. And it lists things like, I agree to use scientifically accurate material and demonstrate responsible environmental behaviors when I'm with learners. Things like that. Other ways to show exemplary EE practice are things like letters of recommendation or supervisor observations of your teaching that can really demonstrate how you are using good ongoing learning and professional development. We've gotten everything from certificates, from workshops, lists of workshops and professional development that folks have done. And we really love to see reflection. What did you get out of one of those things that you attended? How are you building your skills? What did you learn? Planning and implementing environmental education. This is one of the places where the master and the certified level differs pretty heavily. At the certified level, you can submit materials and talk about lessons and things that you have taught that maybe you didn't write. Let's say you work for a big organization and the curriculum is already in place. You can use that as part of the certified level. At the master level, we do ask that you have written some of your own materials. And we ask you to submit two of those. People will submit a lot of essays on education, not advocacy. And then what's really helpful in this theme again is reflection. So when you submit a lesson plan, two lesson plans, they might cover all of these different things. But if you can reflect on what teachable moments popped up while you were teaching it, how did you use those? What did you know about the learner's background and how did you use that to alter and adapt the lesson to meet their needs? Those types of things, it's most easy to show through reflection. We do get videos sometimes for this theme. I would just recommend that if you do submit any videos, you wanna make sure they're not too short so that reviewers can actually see a competency taking place. So you don't want quick little clips of things, but you also wanna make sure they're not too long that reviewers won't have time to see what you're trying to show them. So really think about the length and what competency you're trying to demonstrate anytime you submit a video. And then finally, assessment and evaluation. We talked a little bit about each of these pieces and how those two terms are different. This is another one that looks very different at the certified and the master certified level. At the master certified level, we do want you to have done a program evaluation. You don't have to have done that at the certified level. To show program evaluation, that could be an evaluation report or it could be something more like an evaluation plan if you haven't done that. One thing to be sure to do, a lot of times people will just submit a tool and a tool is really excellent, but it doesn't tell us the whole story of a program evaluation. So we do wanna know things like, what are your evaluation questions? So we can see that the tool matches what you actually wanna know. How did you collect the data? How did you analyze the data? And what changes are you gonna make as a result of that evaluation? So you wanna make sure that all of those pieces are included. In terms of improving instruction, the other pitfall I would try and avoid, a lot of times we'll get people who submit evaluations on their programming that are all 100% positive. It's all five circles that the program was excellent, which that's awesome that the programming was excellent, but it doesn't tell reviewers how you might have made changes and improved your instruction based on that. So if you're using data to show improving instruction, you wanna show that you had something to fix or to change. So think about that when you're picking what to include in there. We do wanna see those types of changes. So I know that's a lot all at once in terms of all of the different types of evidence that you can include, but really make this personal to you and make it something that comes from your body of work. Again, we don't want you to have to recreate the wheel just for the purpose of certification. So I always recommend looking at the competencies and thinking about what you already have to match those and pulling that out first before you start going through and generating any new material for a portfolio. Okay, so that was a lot about what goes into a portfolio, but let's talk just a little bit about what the process is for getting certified. So first thing, if you haven't already, I recommend you go online and submit the interest, general interest form. That lets us know that you're starting to think about it and we can keep you on our list to send you relevant dates, upcoming portfolio reviews, relevant professional development opportunities, all of those things. So that will help us help you if you fill out that interest form. Then you get to work on your portfolio development and this happens entirely at your own pace. We do offer a course, a summer online course in the summer that is aligned with certification. So if you're someone who likes deadlines and due dates and the self-guided nature of the portfolio is a little tough to get done, that is something to consider to help you go through the process. Once you've finished your portfolio, you can submit that along with the fee for certification. And at that point, the portfolio will be reviewed by three different reviewers. And those reviewers have to come to consensus before we notify you about certification. And they will never say, no, you're not certified. What they will say is, I think you probably know it, but I can't see it in the portfolio. Sometimes these are hard things to put into a written document or something that you can hand to us. So we'll just ask for more information and you can resubmit as many times as necessary and there is no additional fee to do that. We want you to be successful. And we know that the portfolio by nature, because we're not watching you teach, there are some things that are hard. So after that review, we will notify you. And let me talk a little bit about how the reviewers review each of them. Well, let me back up a little bit and just let you know what the costs are. If you remember for the certified level, it is $60 and $100 if you're a non-member. For the master level, which is a much bigger, meatier process, that is $200 or $240 if you're a non-member. If you take the online summer course and pay the summer course fee for that instruction, the actual review process is included in the cost of the course, so there's no additional fee. There is a $50 additional fee for the master level. That fee is at least partially included in the course. Certification is good for seven years and every seven years we'll ask you to recertify. That process is fairly simple. What we ask you to do is submit a one-page essay on what you've learned and how you've grown and submit 56 hours of professional development. And you just have to document that you attended that and the number of hours that were part of that. And we ask you to sign that you're being honest with that, but we don't ask for specific documentation from wherever you took that professional development. So all of this information is on the website and you can find it under the programs tab. There is a tab for certification. And if you click that, you will see on the left-hand navigation there is a tab called how to get certified. It walks through those steps that I just walked you through and you can download the rubrics from there. The rubrics are what the reviewers will use to review your portfolio. So I did wanna walk you through how to use them. There's a lot of information included on the rubric. You'll see at the top is the overarching theme and then right underneath that is the competency. Those competencies get broken down into even more detail on this left-hand side where you see 1.1.1 as understand the nature of inquiry. Then in the columns, as you move across the sheet, it breaks down what that looks like at different levels. So if you are a novice level at understanding the nature of inquiry, you're not going to identify any key characteristics of that in whatever you submit. Developing, you might identify a few of those key ideas, but if you're at the master level, you're gonna identify key ideas, you're gonna provide examples how inquiry leads to critical thinking, and you're going to critique how inquiry is used in the field of environmental. When you're looking at the master rubric to get master certified, we are looking at that master column. That's where we want you to fall and we're hoping to score the portfolio. On the very right-hand side, if you think, oh my gosh, I have no idea what evidence to include, there are some suggestions for that evidence. Again, you don't have to include these things. Please include things that you have already done or part of your body of work, but these are some suggestions to spark your thinking and give you some ideas. And then at the very bottom, you'll see this self-review section. This is a section that we ask you to fill out and submit with your portfolio so that if there's evidence where you might need to provide a little bit of additional context or you might need to provide some information about where or when you did it, or maybe it's a really big document and you wanna point us where to look. Reviewers are human, particularly when someone submits their dissertation. Reviewers wanna know what parts do we focus on? And so this is a really good place to make notes and think about those different opportunities for directing reviewers where they need to go. The certified rubric is very similar, but slightly different in terms of how it's laid out. You'll see the same themes and it will be the exact same wording that you saw in the master level because that's the end goal. However, you don't necessarily need to meet each one of these individual competencies when you're looking at the certified rubric. So the adequate and target level will lay out exactly where you need to be and what needs to be included to show an overarching understanding of that field. On the certified level, you can be certified if you are falling into the adequate category or the target category. So there's a little more wiggle room within this theme. Again, you'll see similar boxes for those suggested pieces of evidence and at the bottom, the place to put those notes and pieces that might be helpful to reviewers. I will also just wanna throw out there that this is your professional portfolio. So feel free to make it what is most useful to you. I will say one year we got a portfolio with a Boston Marathon race car time limit. Now, that didn't necessarily tell us anything about his environmental education practice, but I could see if he was gonna use this portfolio in a job interview or with a potential employer. There's a lot of things that that might demonstrate. Perseverance, the ability to work towards a goal, things you might want to showcase for a potential employer. So just because it doesn't fit in the portfolio, we want you to be able to use this and make it your own and make it useful for things additional to just this program. So feel free to be creative with that. Couple other resources I wanted to make sure you knew about. One is the Across the Spectrum ebook. This is a free online book. You'll find it if you Google it or on the North American Association for Environmental Education's website. And we will send out the link with the follow-up to this webinar. Has a lot of great background material in the history of the field, particularly for theme two. Folks come into the environmental education field from many different directions and may or may not have ever studied some of the background information of the field. This is a great place to find it. I mentioned the summer online course as a tool for folks who feel like they would like a little more structure to the process. Excuse me. And then there is also, throughout the year, we'll be doing several different guidelines training. And the guidelines for excellence in environmental education are a great resource and a great tool to use throughout the certification process. And so we'll be doing training this year on the non-formal environmental education guidelines, the early childhood guidelines, and the learner guidelines, which are basically standard for K through 12 learners in environmental education. There are also on NAAE's website new modules that are totally self-guided. You can do them in about an hour. And they have individual learning modules on what is E, the history of E, and research and evaluation. So those can be great tools if you want a little more background in any of those. A couple other tools you might check out. The North American Association for Environmental Education has a great database of professional learning opportunities. So if you get into the certification process and you feel like, gosh, I really need more background in X, there are ways to search for this on NAAE's website. There are different professional developments, webinars, online trainings, online courses posted all the time. You can also find jobs posted there. There are also a variety of discussion groups, which you can see along the right-hand side here if you wanna talk to anybody about any particular aspect of environmental education. There's a variety of different topics you can talk about. And then in the center here, you might see the guidelines for the preparation and professional development of environmental educator self-assessment. This is an incredible tool. You can rate yourself in each of the competencies and it will pump out a list of resources in professional development offerings that align with the ones that you say you're interested or want more information in. So if you are looking for more ways to grow in the field, this is a really great way to get started. And this is all free, you can create a profile for free. All right, so I just threw out a lot of information about certification. You might have a lot of questions, so I wanna be sure and take a few minutes. And we have about 10 minutes to answer any questions you might have. Yep, Katie, there were a couple of questions submitted. So the first one is, are portfolios usually giant binders full of paper, electronic documents, or do people ever do websites? Great question, all of the above. We've gotten very different formats. We do get binders. We do get online electronic PDFs. That's probably the most common. We have gotten websites. We've gotten Google Drive folders with linked documents where there'll be hyperlinks to all kinds of different things. Again, we wanna make this something that is useful to you and the best way that you can organize it. So we are pretty open in terms of format. The only thing I would say is just to do your best in terms of however you format it to draw lines for reviewers to find what they need to look for. We have gotten portfolios that are 15 pages long, and we've gotten portfolios that are two feet tall. And so when reviewers are going through something particularly that is big and meaty, it's easy to miss things. So the more that you can point them in the right direction for what you really want them to see and take note of, that's really helpful for them. And again, for that reason, because they're human and they do miss things, that's why we have three people review it. So that if one of them missed it, somebody else can say, you know what, I saw that here. So know that there are some ways to help. Great. The second question is just, can you repeat the number of PD hours for recertification that someone needs? Great question. It's 56 hours or about eight hours a year. And we are very broad in terms of what counts in terms of professional development. So, and especially if you can tell us why that's helpful to you and helps you grow as an educator, then it should count. And we will include, in some cases, serving on committees or working groups as part of professional development, because we know that you learn a lot from being a part of those types of collaborative groups. Great. The next question is, is there a limit on how old your evidence can be? No, there is not. Great question. We don't care if it's 40 years old or yesterday that you created it, as long as it demonstrates the competency. Awesome. The next one, there's two more and they keep coming in. So we've got about five more minutes. I think we're doing okay. But let's see, the next one is, are there requirements on amounts of experience working with different age groups in the EE field? For example- Oh, if you haven't had experience doing EE with high school age students, will that be detrimental to certification? Does this differ between the master and the certified level? Great question. No, we don't have any requirements. And certification is a subjective process and reviewers are gonna look at things a little bit differently. So if you are an early childhood educator and you apply for certification, we are gonna view it with that lens. We might not expect that your knowledge of environmental processes and systems be the same as a college ecology professor, but we are going to expect, if you're working with early childhood learners, that your knowledge of developmental appropriate practices is really strong. And so reviewers are going to be able to kind of adjust their expectations according to who you work with and what work you're doing in a way that makes sense. So that not everybody is held to the same exact bar on everything, if that makes sense. Okay, and then the next one or the last one I see here is, is it necessary to submit evidence for each competency or could one piece of evidence cover many competencies? Great question. One piece of evidence can cover many competencies and that's where the portfolio rubric can be really helpful because you might be able to say, be the X piece of evidence in multiple places. So as long as you can draw those lines and label that well, we highly encourage that. Great, one more question came in. Just who are the reviewers? Can you provide examples of their experience? Great question. So all of our reviewers are people that did one of two things. One, they are master certified and have been through the process and the program. So they've met all of those competencies and demonstrated high quality skills. Or we do have some reviewers that were honorary certified and those reviewers were all honorary certified in 2008 because obviously we didn't have any certified environmental educators yet. So they were the first group of reviewers and they had to be nominated by their peers as having met all of those competencies already and they had to submit an application or a nomination form for those reviewers. Great, I think that's all the questions I see unless anyone has any other questions, we'll maybe wrap up. All right, well, again, I wanna thank everybody for joining us this afternoon to talk about this. It's something that I really benefited a lot from personally and so I'm happy to help support you and in any way that we can. And please let me know if you have any questions as you're starting to do the work or as you get in if things get confusing or muddy or if you wanna run something by us, we are more than happy to talk about it. We will follow up with a few of these resources for you so you can check them out as needed or as is applicable and otherwise hope you have an excellent afternoon and rest of your week. And I'll just echo Katie's thanks for joining us this afternoon and I will send a follow-up email with these resources, a link to view this webinar again and also with a brief evaluation of the webinar today. And again, our next webinar is on February 22nd and we hope to see you there. Have a great day.