AquaOptimism is the Wave of the Future

AquaOptimism™ blends STEM curricular design, innovative learning, and TMA Foundation’s vision for a sustainable Blue Future, giving students the tools they need to create, innovate, and lead.

I had the extreme pleasure to collaborate on and co-develop the TK-12 AquaOptimism™ modules with a short list of amazing TK-12 educators. This curriculum is a call to action for educators everywhere to share the importance and amazing power of water. I co-designed and co-authored all of the TK-5 modules, working alongside the innovative author and educator, Maria Nichols. This week, November 15-19th is BlueTech Week, which is an annual event that brings together industry partners from around the world to solve the toughest water and ocean-related challenges. This year’s theme is AquaOptimism™: Inclusion, Inspiration, Innovation and we are proud to officially launch our curriculum.

Elements of Design

Our body of work combines the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), bringing a focus on literacy, career awareness, engineering design, and student action through a project-based learning approach. We hope that through these modules we can instill environmental stewardship in our youngest learners and cultivate a care and appreciation for water, both freshwater and the ocean. 

A Labor of Love

This was a full circle journey for me as an educator. My first job in education was as an informal educator at the Birch Aquarium at Scripps. Having grown up in Palm Springs, my experience the aquarium built a love and appreciation of the ocean and I got to share that love with visitors worldwide. I also worked on one of the most important exhibits I’ve ever had the chance to collaborate on, Feeling the Heat: The Climate Change Challenge with some of the most amazing Scripps Institute of Oceanography scientists working to educate the public on climate change. It was such a formative experience for me, and today, almost 20 years later, we are still in the grips of the climate crisis. It is an enduring problem and one we must resolve to address with the same fervor as many of today’s young activists. 

I encourage you to check out the AquaOptimism™ curriculum which was made possible thanks to the visionary leadership and support of the TMA BlueTech and TMA Foundation in partnership with IlluminatED Collective. I hope these resources inspire you to engage your students in meaningful science inquiry, explore relevant topics affecting those students, and learn through a lens of stewardship and student agency. 

We have to keep hope that through innovative, exploratory, and liberating experiences for children we can reimagine the world as it could be. That’s why AquaOptimism™ is so important and I’m so excited to share it with all of you!