Even though the world looks completely different than it did a little over a year ago, one thing has stayed the same: the joy of summer break! While kids look forward to the freedom of summer, we want to take a moment to look back on the excellence achieved in our schools and our bee community this year despite navigating the new and difficult terrain of socially distanced education.
While still in a virtual world, we were buzz-y at work bringing distance learning to schools across the US and Canada. We worked with 170 classes across 18 states and two countries to reach a grand total of 14,218 students this spring--all at no cost to students or schools! We could not have done this without our amazing team of staff and interns, our sweet-as-honey volunteers and incredible individual and corporate donors.
This school year may be coming to a close but we have our eyes (and antennae) set on the Fall! We would be thrilled to join your class and learn about bees together! Our standards-based, distance learning, STEM program is available to educators around the world. Our program includes three asynchronous video lessons and four virtual synchronous E-STEM lessons that are tailored uniquely to each grade level taught. For differentiated learning, classroom teachers are provided with supplementary materials such as worksheets, activities, and scripted lesson plans that align with Next Generation Science Standards and the Common Core. Registration for the 2021-2022 school year is now open, educators can read lesson descriptions and sign up here!
Like bees in a colony, we couldn’t have gotten through such difficult times without keeping our communities strong. This year, we were able to share our love of bees and support the education of these communities through our brand new Bee A Steward Kit program which we launched at the end of April. Thanks to the FS Foundation we were able to provide 250 kits to community members across the Bay Area. The intergenerational nature of the kits included activities for all ages to help the bees and learn about environmental stewardship with a family or community member.
In the East Bay, we were thrilled to have continued our work with Peralta Hacienda’s Youth Making History group. These green-minded teen leaders are learning beekeeping and working hard in their communities to make a difference for pollinators and the earth!
We traveled to the Central Valley to get our legs moving with another incredible partner. A great big thank you to Burroughs Family Farm for sponsoring their 5K run on behalf of Planet Bee at their breath-takingly bee-utiful farm. Proceeds from this annual event help to fund Planet Bee distance learning programs in under-resourced schools.
This spring we also celebrated our community work on the other side of the country and marked one year of working with The GIANT Company. We are so thrilled to partner with them in their super sweet impact with the PA Department of Education. We did a hive dive at their campus in Carlisle, PA in early May and have been conducting professional development workshops with Pennsylvania teachers since then! Stay tuned for more buzz-worthy updates about our summer plans with The GIANT Company!
We were busy maintaining our 2,000,000 honey bees across the Bay Area at schools, community gardens and campuses such at Google, Stanford University, Keller Estate and Sutro Tower. Our fuzzy friends are crucial for pollination to keep local crops and ecosystems buzzing.
A great big thank you to VMWare for their continued support of our infrastructure through The Good Gigs Grant and to Pestec, BeeSure, Western Digital, The GIANT Company and other corporations helping to expand the reach of our educational programs through their generous donations. Interested in bee-coming a corporate sponsor?
And finally, after such a challenging but rewarding year, we look forward to summer--the bees are out and we are ready for the next season here at Planet Bee! Are you ready to kick back and relax this summer? Do it while learning about bees! Our summer reading list has all our favorite books to read at any age. Check it out and tag us in your pictures with your favorite from the list!
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Written by Claire Bradley and Annie McCann
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