3 Key Ingredients to the Piscataquis Environmental Education Collaborative’s Success

Piscataquis County is a bright spot for nature learning in rural Maine — largely thanks to the Piscataquis Environmental Education Collaborative (PEEC).

Founded in 2022 by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Rural Aspirations Project, the Natural Resource Education Center at Moosehead Lake, and the Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District, PEEC represents a truly collective effort.

Together, members from these organizations coordinate their efforts to teach the foundational ecological principles of the Maine woods and expose students to the traditional natural resources careers available to them. And today, with its two new members — the Maine TREE Foundation and Maine Audubon — PEEC remarkably reaches students in every school in the county.

In April, my Onion Foundation teammates, Diana Morris and Holly Taylor, and I visited these partners to see their work in action. Through a series of site visits, a lunch with a school principal and guidance counselor, and a half-day convening of the PEEC partners, we came away with a sense of the key ingredients that make them so successful.

1. Variety and Choice

In Piscataquis County, the outdoors is more than a place to learn. It’s a place for adventure and exercise, and it’s a key part of the local economy.

Through PEEC, young people can learn all about this local ecosystem with the Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine Audubon, or the Piscataquis County Soil and Water District. They can explore winter trails in an afterschool ski club with the Natural Resource Education Center.

They can even continue learning about the environment far after the school year ends by enrolling in the six-week Maine Woods Explorers program run in partnership by the Natural Resource Education Center and the Appalachian Mountain Club.

Teens who are ready for even more adventure can sign up for Penobscot Paddlers, a five-day canoe trip to build water skills, gain ecological knowledge, and foster a meaningful connection to Maine’s wilderness. Middle schoolers, on the other hand, can learn about potential careers at the annual green jobs fair hosted by all the PEEC partners.

2. Relationships and Experience

The women who lead PEEC might come from different partner organizations, but they all have one thing in common: a holistic understanding of the local community’s needs and interests.

This understanding comes from firsthand experience, too. Among these nonprofits leaders are former teachers and parents with children in the public schools. Many have previously held positions at different organizations in the collaborative or within the school district. And while the six organizations operate very differently, they partner with ease to maximize opportunities for young people.

As active, caring members of their own communities, they have relationships with the school-based partners and families they serve. They know what educators need and what works for local families, and they develop their programs with those things in mind.

3. Flexibility and Co-Designed Programs

For the PEEC partners, a nature-learning plan is never one-size-fits-all. So when the founding four members first came together as a collaborative, their first step was to hold an in-person meeting with Piscataquis County school administrators to learn how they could help meet the schools’ needs.

That same practice continues today. The director of the Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District, for example, sits down with teachers at the beginning of the school year to co-design a program that fits with each teacher’s plan for the year and meets educational standards.

When we visited, we were fortunate to see this tailored plan in action: Educators from the Piscataquis County Soil and Water Conservation District met up with the natural resources class from the Tri-County Technical Center for a watershed lesson in Browns Mill Park. While they used their tried-and-true watershed teaching model at the start of the lesson, they also trained students on macroinvertebrate sampling in the Piscataquis River to evaluate river health.

The lesson helped prepare the students to become teachers themselves for an upcoming field trip of 4th graders. Practicing their macroinvertebrate sampling skills ahead of time equipped them to feel confident mentoring the younger students.

Every partner in PEEC offers something a little different, and since each partner can route a teacher to the program that will best meet their needs, there is no wrong door.

More Access, More Adventure

Offering both stability and flexibility, adventure and career options, and experience and a willingness to learn new things, the PEEC partners provide something special to the young people of Piscataquis County.

They build on the nature connections seeded through school-based nature learning, and then keep kids engaged with new challenges, skills, and experiences as they get older. As their in-school science classes become more complex and varied, students get to find their niche with PEEC — whether that’s monitoring water quality, exploring the woods, or skiing the mountains in their areas.

It’s this sense of exposure and access to the outdoors that spurs students’ connection to the environment they call home. For these students, PEEC shows them that anything is possible.