Valley Branch ELC Welcomes its new Education Director
My career has been dedicated to education, science and language. I first learned my love of teaching children while working at the Bell Museum of Natural History for four years. My favorite part was guiding tours through the museum where elementary students were a pack of wolves chasing me, the deer, throughout the halls of the museum.
I spent two of the best summers of my life working as a trail counselor in the BWCAW for teenagers through the YMCA Camp Menogyn. This inspired me to become a licensed high school science teacher. I built the environmental education program at Como Park Senior High School including launching the Advanced Placement Environmental Science course, co-launching an award-winning environmental club and transforming the general environmental class into a service-learning initiative with Eco Education. Community partners were important assets while teaching at Como Park Senior High School. Como Woods Outdoor Classroom helped organize many activities in the local woodland like field days and buckthorn busts. Great River Greening’s Area Teens Network involved my environmental students in local Scientific and Natural Areas. After the school day I enjoyed coaching many of my students in Nordic skiing and cross-country running.
I love language. I first learned Spanish while studying in Alicante, Spain for a semester. This experience gave me the opportunity to teach Spanish to elementary and secondary students in a Waldorf school in the small town of Viroqua, Wisconsin. I completed my student teaching in Costa Rica in order to learn how to teach biology in Spanish. I learned Swahili while studying on exchange at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania for a year. After visiting the chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania, I was lucky enough to have a photo published in National Geographic Magazine – boy was I surprised!
I plan to spend my first months as Education Director by aligning our already excellent curriculum to the new state science standards. More high school students will be making Valley Branch a field trip destination this year. We see 10,000 students each year mostly as 3rd and 5th graders, and now we’re looking forward to seeing those same students years later as teenagers. High school classes will be tailored to the teachers’ needs in their curriculum. Classes already showing interest in Valley Branch include chemistry, AP environmental science, biology and art.
The staff are incredibly talented and committed to the mission of Valley Branch. VBELC’s environmental education curriculum, which has been improved upon over 36 years, is a treasure. I believe immersion instruction, as focused on in an ELC setting, is the most effective approach to learning. Valley Branch delivers exceptional experiences to students in a variety of natural habitats. Saint Paul Public Schools is very fortunate to have Valley Branch, its staff and its unique relationship with Belwin Conservancy. This powerful tool is a unique model in the USA allowing us to best cater to the needs of our diverse urban students and close the achievement gap in SPPS.
I was just married this summer to Stephanie Borchardt (now Stephanie Leonard). We live in Como Park in Saint Paul. We spend as much time as possible outdoors including running, canoeing, Nordic skiing, traveling, reading and playing with our new puppy, Auggie.