Facilitator Roles & Responsibilities
KAEE Facilitator Roles and Responsibilities
As a KAEE Facilitator, you set the stage for learning and encourage participants to explore and develop as professionals. A Facilitator serves as a guide, helping workshop participants gain a better understanding of the program, its use, and potential impacts on students’ environmental awareness and understanding. Your job is to help people feel comfortable in the group, to listen as much or more than you talk, and to help others understand what they have learned.
KAEE Facilitators are required to host a minimum of one educator training in at least one curriculum each calendar year. This policy assists KAEE with keeping a highly-trained team that is up to date with the latest curriculum and program information to share pertaining to KAEE. KAEE values the information it offers to its members and therefore also must ensure that the Facilitator list presented is accurate and currently lists only those Facilitators that are willing to serve when contacted.
The Two Hats of EE
In this article John Hug talks about the two hats we wear as environmental educators. The educator hat and the advocacy hat. When we are wearing our educator hat, it is our job to represent all sides of environmental issues and prepare students with the knowledge and critical thinking skills they need to make informed decisions about such. In this way, we take off our advocacy hat and are focused on facilitating student learning.
We know that a key component of environmental education is leading students to take action but we do not want to be the ones to dictate what that action is. The challenging part of environmental issues is that they are usually complex problems without one right answer. Solutions or answers to these complex problems differ greatly based on each individual's values.
This isn’t to say that we as environmental educators do not advocate for environmental issues - we certainly do and should (after all - taking action is the whole point of this!). This is just a matter of being keenly aware of when we should be wearing our educator hat instead of our advocate hat.
As educators we are equipping the next generation of active citizens to make their own voices heard. And what is wonderful about EE is that it can bring a diverse cadre of voices to the table for more robust discussions that help us all see different perspectives and learn from one another.