Looking Back at 2016 and Ahead to 2017

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Students from Stony Point High School, in Round Rock, Texas, enjoy planting their pollinator garden in 2015. According to their teacher, Pam Bethke, the garden is now a certified Monarch Waystation, and has become a sense of pride for the entire school! Click here to read more.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Now that everyone is back to school I want to take this opportunity to thank you for helping this Monarch Waystation Network project get off to such a fantastic start in 2016! As a former teacher, I understand the degree of responsibilities placed on each of you. I realize how hard, and how rewarding, your job can be. There are countless ideas and projects to incorporate into your curriculum or into your school clubs. I sincerely thank you for choosing to incorporate monarchs and other pollinators, and for becoming a valuable member of the Monarch Waystation Network! Human survival depends largely on the work of pollinators, so every bit of habitat created for them, and every inspired child makes a positive impact! Your efforts are extremely important to your students, your school, your community, and our world!

Data Since Education Coordinator Hired in April to Develop the MWN

Needs assessment sent to 315 teachers who were previous recipients of free milkweed plants through our Free Milkweed for Schools and Nonprofits program. Feedback was obtained from 64% of the recipients, and showed an overwhelming need for support through the proposed creation of a Monarch Waystation Network.
The Monarch Waystation Network was officially launched in August, and currently consists of four primary components: a website, a forum, a newsletter, and email correspondence.
Website traffic has steadily increased each month.
Our support and newsletter list is up to 1,459 recipients.
The forum has 168 registered users. If you haven't registered, take a minute to do so, because the 2017 season promises to be very active.
Weekly email correspondences range between 5-25 teachers and students per week.
Poster presentation at the National Association of Biology Teacher's Conference.
Recent article published in the Green Schools National Network newsletter (see below for information).

Exciting News!

If you are not familiar with the Green Schools National Network, they are an organization with a very strong mission to provide evidence-based resources for green, healthy, sustainable schools. They are a wealth of information, and their monthly newsletter journal is read by more than 11,000 subscribers. I was contacted by the editor to write an article for their January edition. Taking testimonials and pictures you have sent to me, as well as historical data about our Monarch Watch tagging program, I crafted an article that I hope you take a few minutes to read. Several teachers and students are featured, so click HERE to read it! And while you're there, you may want to sign up to receive their monthly newsletter!

Collages

Enjoy the following collages submitted as part of the annual report to the funders of the Education Coordinator position. We hope they see the value of this Monarch Waystation Network, and choose to fund it for another year, so we can continue supporting you and your students!

*Click each collage to view it a larger size.

Feedback

The Monarch Waystation Network was developed to support you! If you have comments, questions, ideas for ways to improve, pictures or testimonials to share, notice any mistakes or technical problems, or want to provide any other general feedback, please know you can always do so by:

contacting me directly at matt.tucker@ku.edu
replying to one of our blog posts
or better yet, by creating a forum post in order to facilitate dialogue between all MWN participants

Thanks again for all you do! I look forward to an exciting year of working together to provide meaningful educational opportunities for your students! Stay tuned for new MWN services developing in 2017:)

Monarch Waystation Network

2021 Constant Ave.

Lawrence, KS 66047

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