Barbara Cook has been a teacher for 29 years and has been involved in environmental education for over 20 years. She teaches science and reading to seventh grade students and computers to seventh and eighth graders at Greenfield Middle School in Greenfield, Ohio. During her career, Barb has held several educational leadership positions, both as a principal and as a superintendent of local school districts. Over the years, her classroom and administrative background have provided invaluable insight into administering PLT and other environmental education programs to formal educators.
Barb trained first as a facilitator for Project WILD, then Project Learning Tree, then Project WET, and most recently Food, Land & People. She has facilitated more than a hundred presentations or workshops, reaching over a thousand teachers. For 10 years, Barb has been a member of the Ohio PLT State Steering Committee, and currently she is an executive officer.
She has always played a lead role in aligning PLT and other curriculum to Ohio’s latest academic standards. In 2004, Barb participated in a collaborative project between PLT, Project WET, and Project WILD to write and update curriculum correlations that teachers can now easily access from an interactive database on the Ohio Department of Natural Resources website. Barb was selected to help develop and write PLT’s PreK-8 Energy & Society kit. She is working on integrating PLT workshops into classes for pre-service educators at Wilmington College and is assisting the Ohio PLT Coordinator in developing a PLT facilitator mentoring program.
Throughout her career as a teacher and administrator, Barb has been a staunch supporter of environmental education in school programming. She is just as at home sitting in a group of preschool children as she is making a professional presentation or talking with the School Board. Barb is known as both a tremendous leader and inspirational teacher.
Barb was named National PLT Outstanding Educator in 2006.
Vanessa Bullwinkle
Vanessa Bullwinkle
