Empowering Educators: Inside MakeWater and Duckie Design’s Professional Development Course
In this interview, Jessica Paz from Duckie Design and Ryan from MakeWater discuss the details of their professional development course, its unique objectives, and the transformative impact they hope to achieve. From hands-on experiences to collaborative curriculum building, their vision transcends traditional boundaries, offering educators and water professionals a platform to engage, innovate, and make an impact.
Join us as we delve into their journey, exploring the intersection of education, technology, and water conservation and uncovering the potential to spark curiosity and meaningful dialogue in classrooms across Texas and beyond.
Q1: First, I want to introduce Jessica Paz, the founder of Duckie Design, who's been collaborating with MakeWater on several projects. So, Jessica, do you want to go ahead and tell us a bit more about yourself?
Hi, I'm Jessica. I started Duckie Design LLC because I used to work at a utility, and I've been in education for many, many years and I enjoy merging those two worlds together. And I have fun working on professional development, education, lesson plans, etc.
Q2: Can you provide an overview of the professional development course and its objectives?
(Ryan) The idea of this professional development is to introduce our ecosystem of experiments and experiences of MakeWater to educators and even water, professionals, where they can actually get continuing education hours, which they need for their teacher certificate, but at the same time, they get something to take to the classroom that might be different and unique, that is engaging for the students. We're building it to have local Texas educational standards for testing. We’re trying to tick all the boxes off where it makes it as easy for the educators to implement. But at the end of the day, have it be something where it's empowering for the educators and students and inspiring for them to actually do something, give something back, or be part of maybe change in the water world. We're really excited about this professional development and we're planning on bringing it to a lot of cities around Texas.
Q3: How does the program plan to introduce educators to its ecosystem and engage them in conservation robotics and water education?
(Jessica) This professional development isn't going to be a sit down and watch a PowerPoint presentation. It's going to be all hands-on. We're going to have a Q&A about water. We will do some presentations about their local source– depending on what region we're in. We want to incorporate information about getting their water from a river, groundwater, aquifer, or anywhere, and then introduce them to some coding kits and electro-co-agulation kits, where they do the experimentation together as a group in hopefully their respective grade levels. Then, we have our review of what works best for you. They also get to take home their own kit, experiment at home by themselves, and hopefully take it back to their classroom.
Q4: What sets this Professional Development Course apart from other professional development opportunities, and why should educators choose this course over others?
(Ryan) I think what sets us apart and what's unique is just this ability actually to bring water professionals in, have them meet with educators, actually work together on curriculum building and lesson plans where the educators can actually see what the professionals in the water field actually need or are trying to convey in that region, bring that to the students. This way is collaborative and empowering, and I say empowering because, as a nonprofit, it is tied to our mission of advancing education about water. The participants, educators, professionals, and students learn something new, maybe in coding, maybe in engineering, or 3D printing. We're even starting to implement AI in some of our projects, where students will turn in an AI-assisted presentation about a water topic. We're always bringing new technology to this realm of water. And hopefully, in the long run, students might find new career paths and we're trying to have that win-win for everybody.
Q5: How do you plan to continuously improve and evolve the course based on feedback and changing educational needs?
(Jessica) Well, our educators will have those ‘’a-ha!’’ moments where they learn about each other's classrooms. What works best for third grade might not work best for environmental science, twelfth grade. So how can they utilize it in their classroom? Plus, we'll update the website with resources they can use throughout the year. And as we build on it, we just keep adding and adding, and from there, we can continue adding more content and designs.
(Ryan) I think you hit the nail on the head. Inherently in this program, the idea was how to build off of each other's work and not have this flat sort of linear path with our program but have it evolve because of the participation of the educators, professionals, and students. It's a little bit of responsibility, and once you have that responsibility or feel of like, ‘’ I’m important, and I can make change even in this water ecosystem and this curriculum,’’ it's improving. So your input helps the next educator or the next experiment that the students take on. And that has been in our mantra from the beginning. I feel like it's now really taking shape, and I'm seeing it a little bit better, and I see more of this pathway of it growing now than in a lot of years of just putting things together. Each professional development will just be an improvement of the one, previous.
Q5: Are there any plans to expand the reach of the Professional Development Course beyond Texas in the future?
(Jessica) I think the fact that I'm from the Rio Grande Valley, about 3-4 hours away from Ryan, and we end up still having that same mission of ‘’ How are we going to do this all over?) In Texas, we have the state standards for teaching, but, we don't want just to hit public schools. We want to do private schools. We want to help utilities with their education programs, which can be done throughout the country or the world. We just want to create curious students and make a phenomenon happen.
(Ryan) To add to that, it's a great setup where every city has a water utility or has water resources. And a water organization for that area that takes care of them. This might be a great way to grow where we connect the educators and those professionals because there are a lot of times they're looking for a new approach to education or sharing something because each region is also specific and has its own specific issues. We're hearing that one size fits all doesn't really work when it comes to certain educational programs that are out there for water. Also, we're learning and repeating what we've heard in the field. By doing this, we're growing organically and at a pace where we can manage it and grow one by one with each city utility region. But we can see that it could grow nationwide in this route if they organically hear about us and want to apply what we’re doing. Once we work with them the first time, it’ll be much easier to work with them a second time and a third time because we'll have already added their local flair to our program.
I hope we see this program grow and, as you said, Jessica, create curious students and educators alike.
