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Water Efficiency Grant Program Final Project WET Grant Report (CWN) <br />opportunity to engage directly with water resource professionals in their local communities, while <br />learning about the many programs their water providers offer to encourage water conservation. <br />dater in the Nest workshop participants heard from water managers, County Commissioners, <br />treatment plant operators and others about the past, present and future state of their groundwater <br />dependent water systems. Educators received two resources guides from Project WET, several <br />KIDS booklets designed specifically for students, and numerous other water education resources, <br />tools and opportunities to engage their students. In addition to paying for teachers' continuing <br />education credits through the Colorado School of Mines and providing lunch, the sponsors took <br />teachers on a field trip each day; to Parker's wastewater treatment plant and to the Ensor well <br />fields owned by Centennial Water and Sanitation District. <br />For the first time in Colorado, Projects WET, ~XIILD and Learning Tree are being officially <br />integrated into the K-12 science curriculum at the request of several school districts. Aurora Public <br />School and the Durango School District have requested that activities from the Projects be plugged <br />in to support and enhance their current science curriculum and help enable the district to meet all <br />of the current Model Content Standards for each grade level. The Project WET materials have <br />been officially endorsed by the school districts and their boards of education. All relevant teachers <br />in the district will receive specialized training on how to incorporate the Project WET materials <br />into their established curriculum and use the resource to support action-oriented education with <br />their students while helping to meet state standards. This district-wide integration is a first for <br />Project WET in the United States and has garnered a great deal of interest from the Project WET <br />International Foundation as well as from coordinators in other states across the country. <br />Colorado Project WET has close partnerships with its "Sister Projects", Project WILD and <br />Project Learning Tree. In Colorado, these two programs have had stable and continued support <br />through the Colorado Division of V~Iildlife and Colorado Forest Service, respectively. Together <br />these three projects create a network of complete natural resource education opportunities. The <br />partnership between the three Projects has been around for more than a decade in Colorado. The <br />three Projects share facilitators, the leadership conference, and Colorado Connections, which reaches <br />over 18,000 teachers statewide several times annually, and jointly train new facilitators. It is this <br />partnership that has allowed Project WET to continue operating at a base level in Colorado <br />Wlthout fulldlllg. <br />Colorado Project WET has strengthened relations with the Project WET International <br />Foundation and other state Project WET programs. One of the most important avenues is <br />participation in the writing workshop at the national conference. The Project SET Curriculum and <br />Activity Guide is undergoing a complete overhaul and will be revamped to remain the premier <br />water education resource in the nation. This revision will incorporate cutting edge educational <br />practices, technology applications and add content on water resources not available when the <br />original guide was written in the 1990's. This writing workshop was the start to developing <br />materials and activities for teaching about snow, snow pack, climate, and climate change. The <br />Colorado Project WET Coordinator is continuing to work with the Project WET International <br />Foundation and coordinators from other western state to further develop these activities and <br />ensure their relevance and accuracy in Colorado. <br />Page 7 <br />