© 2022 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XXXIX, Issue 2 Page 35

Abstract

The Planet Stewards Program is invaluable for connecting teachers and informal 

educators who are passionate about instilling the value of environmental stewardship in students. A team from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal 

Government developed a curriculum for middle school students at the St. Paul 

Island School in Alaska about marine debris issues that helped them find small-scale 

solutions within their community. We created original lesson plans that utilized 

materials from marine debris experts around the world, and coordinated with 

them to provide virtually visits to students from the school to talk about their work. 

Piloting this curriculum required high levels of communication and collaboration 

with teachers at the St. Paul Island School and the Covid-19 pandemic provided challenges. As a result, our first attempt to deliver the curriculum was done in a hybrid 

format in which the teacher was in the classroom with the students on St. Paul 

Island, and presenters visited the classroom virtually via video conference to talk 

to students and lead classroom activities. We learned many valuable lessons about 

working with teachers and students in a small rural Alaskan community, and hope 

to pass along those lessons for teachers and informal STEM educators in other parts 

of the country.

Our story

Our staff within the Ecosystem Conservation Office, the research and resource management department within Tribal Government, consists of talented scientists and resource 

managers. Within the Tribal Government, we assist teachers in their efforts to offer the 

best education and opportunities possible to their students. As informal STEM educators 

working for an Alaska Native Tribal Government, we are particularly grateful for the opportunity to connect with and learn from other teachers – their input and creativity helped 

us to develop and propose a project that could hopefully engage and inspire the students 

of St. Paul Island, Alaska. We work closely with teachers at the St. Paul Island School and 

recognize that as a small public school in rural Alaska, teachers’ resources are limited. 

Environmental Stewardship on St. Paul Island, Alaska

Veronica Padula, Ecosystem Conservation Office, St. Paul Island, Alaska
© 2022 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Page 36 The Earth Scientist

They are also asked to perform many tasks, going above and beyond for their students. We 

coordinate with teachers to bring our skills into the classroom, sharing our knowledge with 

students through conducting hands-on activities, and providing mentorship for students 

as they grow. While the environmental issues facing small, rural communities may vary 

across the country, we hope that teachers can be inspired by the lesson plans we developed to 

create curriculum that can inspire their students to find local, small-scale solutions to large 

environmental problems. We also hope we can share lessons learned for informal STEM 

educators in how to work with teachers and public schools and small communities.

Planet Stewards allowed us the 

opportunity to work with students 

to take action against marine 

debris, an issue that threatens 

the marine ecosystem of St. Paul 

Island. The Tribal Government 

conducts major marine debris 

cleanups, removing almost of 

25,000 lbs of debris from the 

island’s shoreline within a single 

cleanup event. 

These cleanup events are critical 

to the protection of the island, but 

leave Tribal Government with a 

new issue, which is the disposal 

of the collected marine debris. 

Plastic recycling is not available on 

a remote island like St. Paul, and 

plastic either becomes part of the 

landfill, or we must find a method 

of barging the waste off the island, 

which can be expensive and logistically difficult. 

Our project set out to make 

students aware of the plastic waste 

issue and formulate methods of 

addressing it directly within their 

community. Along with lesson 

plans that provided students with 

more background about marine 

debris, plastic waste and their 

associated negative impacts on the marine environment, we encouraged students to propose 

solutions that could potentially be achieved within their community. Fortunately, our team 

was able to travel to St. Paul Island in July 2021, during a brief period of Covid relief. We took 

advantage of that time on island to conduct cleanups both around the town and along the 

beaches. The team of students removed more than 200 lbs of litter and debris!

We developed unique lesson plans, but we also pulled resources and materials from various 

experts to supplement the information provided. We also invited experts to virtually visit 

Figure 1: Scenes from the May 2019 marine debris 

cleanup, where community members worked 

together to remove over 19,000 lbs of marine 

debris from St. Paul Island’s shoreline

Photo Credit: Ocean Media Institute

Figure 2: Some pieces of marine debris, such as the 

trawl net pictured here, were so large and heavy that 

four wheelers were required to drag them off the 

beaches. Photo Credit: Ocean Media Institut

Figure 3: The debris removed during the May 2019 cleanup was taken to the landfill and sorted by category 

before being weighed. Photo Credit: Veronica Padul
© 2022 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XXXIX, Issue 2 Page 37

students and tell them about their work, which was an extremely 

unique component to this curriculum. 

We combined lessons about environmental issues with lessons about 

technologies that could potentially inspire solutions to the issue. For 

example, students on St. Paul Island are very interested in emerging 

technologies, such as 3D printing. We saw an opportunity to harness 

that interest and develop a project that combined environmental 

stewardship and technology concepts. While St. Paul Island does not 

have an active plastic recycling program on site, machines have been 

designed that can shred plastic items and turn them into 3D printing 

thread. The project for the students involved learning about marine 

debris, the problems with plastic and waste management, and challenging them to design solutions to the issues related to marine debris and plastics.

Figure 8: Students examine a sample of sand for microplastics during the July 

2021 marine debris camp. Photo Credit: Veronica Padul

Figure 9: Another day of marine debris cleanup during the July 2021 

marine debris camp. Photo Credit: Veronica Padul

Figure 6: Recycling bins set up for the start of recycling club

Photo Credit: Jessica Fratis

Figure 4: St. Paul Island students learned about how marine debris impacts marine ecosystems during

the Bering Sea Days event in September 2019. In the lesson pictured here, students were part of a

marine food web where microplastics (another form of marine debris) could be ingested by smaller 

organisms and get amplified through food web dynamics. Photo Credit: Veronica Padul

Figure 5: Students created art installations to help 

bring awareness to the marine debris issue. Photo

Credit: Veronica Padula
© 2022 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Page 38 The Earth Scientist

The reward for all of their hard work was to provide them 

with a ProtoCycler (desktop filament extruder) that could 

recycle plastic waste items into 3D printing thread and 

encourage them to create objects from the recycled plastics 

on 3D printers. Ultimately, we wanted the students to feel 

empowered to make a difference within their community with regards to plastic waste and protecting their 

environment.

The Covid-19 pandemic presented many challenges in the 

execution of this project. We were not able to interact with 

the students in the way we had hoped – St. Paul Island 

is a small and remote community, with limited access to 

health care and a number of Elders that are high risk with 

Covid-19. Travel to St. Paul was limited, and so we could not 

visit the island to deliver the lesson plans laid out in this 

project in person. Classes were remote and this presented 

its own challenges as internet on St. Paul Island is unreliable, resulting in many students 

being unable to access learning materials from home. Teachers were forced to rethink and 

reevaluate lesson plans and teaching methodologies. It would have been too much for us to 

ask the teachers to conduct these lessons with their students, even remotely. A key lesson we 

took away from this is that ongoing communication with teachers was critical, but even more 

critical is showing teachers our support in all ways possible, including showing patience, 

not placing the goals of our project over those of the teachers in providing quality educational experiences.

We were fortunate that by the winter of 2021, school was back in session for the St. Paul 

Island students, and we could join their class remotely. We had a marine debris class session 

every Friday from January to April, where marine debris experts visited students virtually, and the teacher led various activity lessons with the students. The students attempted 

to use the Protocycler and 3D printers several times, and created several amazing 3D 

printed objects.

They often had to trouble shoot issues with the technology but the students were very good 

at finding solutions. A key lesson we took away from this hybrid model of teaching was 

that we needed to be adaptable within our lesson plans. If the internet was not cooperating 

and our virtual visitor could not speak to the class, we ensured that the teacher had been 

provided with enough materials to conduct another lesson with the students, ensuring their 

progress throughout the marine debris curriculum. 

Links to the curriculum:

Module: Introduction to Marine Debris https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GZsQ3xYoYLPk

lAxbG4c2pyPqdkJkDTK_/view

Link to Marine Debris Module 2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BiCaZyHgPCcrp4oH25

zbOrxkxSxczTYd/view

Figure 7: Students experiment with 3D printing

Photo Credit: Ethan Candyfire
© 2022 National Earth Science Teachers Association. All Rights Reserved.

Volume XXXIX, Issue 2 Page 39

Conclusion

The challenges of working with remote communities were certainly highlighted in this 

project and reinforced during the pandemic. This was our first attempt at sharing the 

marine debris curriculum with students in a remote fashion, and we spent a good portion 

of our time trouble-shooting the technology and adjusting the lesson plans. We hope to 

repeat the effort at the St. Paul Island School in the future and collect data about the impact 

on students. It is clear that students in remote and rural communities often do not have 

access to unique educational opportunities or lessons with a local impact. It is up to a coalition of caring adults, from teachers to parents to scientists, to put in the extra effort to 

ensure students in underserved communities are offered opportunities to enhance their 

educational experiences. While it may be difficult, and things may not turn out the way one 

imagines, it is always worth the effort. There may be a student in your orbit that becomes 

inspired and who may one day find the solution to the world’s toughest environmental problems because someone took the time to reach out to their community and introduce them to 

something new.

About the Author

Veronica Padula is the Assistant Director of the Ecosystem Conservation Office, the research and 

resource management branch of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government. Her graduat

research focused on the impacts of marine debris in the Bering Sea Ecosystem. She worked with an

amazing team of educators to develop the marine debris curriculum discussed here: Haley Edmondson, 

Herminia Din, Quin Fitzpatrick and Katy Nalvin. Veronica can be reached at vmpadula@alaska.e