Half-Earth Project Educator Ambassador Program

“You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.”
– E.O. Wilson

What do you do when your students raise their hands and ask, “What can I do to stop species extinction?”

E.O. Wilson proposed an answer to that question when he wrote the book, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, in which he called for us to conserve half the Earth’s lands and seas to provide sufficient habitat for all of life, including ourselves.

And then something wild happened. Everyone started paddling in the same direction.

Transformative moments of discovery that guide our lives in a new direction are rare, and often happen when we are young and open to them.

That’s why Half-Earth Project Educator Ambassadors are so important. Educators hold the power to inspire young minds and transform the future.

“Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.”
– E.O. Wilson

In the early days of the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, we wanted to bottle that moment in a young person’s life – that transformative moment of discovery – and so we started to collect kids voices while they were on BioBlitz’s. This is the story we heard….

Those words didn’t come from a script, they came from the heart. The Half-Earth Project has science at its core and our moral obligation to the rest of life at its heart. We’re working to bottle the inspiration and create the tools to get everyone to Half-Earth.

“We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.”
– E.O.Wilson

The Half-Earth Project Educator Ambassador program was created to provide a platform for teachers to engage each other and their students in the grand ambition of Half-Earth and to inspire and connect students with the natural world.

As part of the Educator Ambassador peer network, community members will have access to a rich set of educational resources, from compelling videos, to cutting-edge digital textbook content, to a state-of-the-art, data-rich interactive tool for mapping Earth’s biodiversity at high-resolution, and of course Ed Wilson’s own writings.

With the grand ambition of Half-Earth as a moonshot, we’re counting on Half-Earth Project Educator Ambassadors to lead the way, guiding their students to be our next generation stewards.

So, when your students raise their hands and ask,
“What can I do to stop species extinction?”

Now you can tell them,
“Help us get to Half-Earth. Here’s how.”

E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth

To create Life on Earth, the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation brought together a team consisting of educators, writers, multimedia artists, 3D animators trained in science and cinema, and textbook professionals, led by naturalist Edward O. Wilson, with the goal of creating a cultural landmark—a portal that will introduce students to the grandest story there is, the story of life on Earth, from molecules to ecosystems, from the origin of life to the modern awareness that we control the environment we live in.

Life on Earth iBook Textbook

Inspired and led by E.O. Wilson, and created with a team of world-renowned educators and artists, this comprehensive and original standards-based curriculum tells the story of life on Earth, giving students a deep understanding of introductory biology.

This captivating and free iBooks textbook, presented as a seven-unit collection, extends students’ learning in and out of the classroom with reading and writing assignments and extension activities like field observation and moviemaking. Designed to prepare tomorrow’s scientists and environmental leaders, this curriculum inspires students to take responsibility for conserving and protecting nature’s biological treasures.

Download Life on Earth

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