Keith Bruno, Audubon Rockies’ community naturalist in southwest Colorado, has been fostering an interest in birds and the local environment through environmental education and community science for the past five years — and this year, he was selected to receive a 2021 ‘Outstanding Educator Award for Excellence in Environmental Education’ from the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE), a professional organization supporting environmental educators across the state. The award recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to their community through environmental education.
According to Katie Navin, executive director of CAEE, “We’re really focused on picking out the people and programs that are opening new doors and looking at new, innovative ways to do environmental education so we can all learn from that and replicate it.”
Innovation was essential for Mr. Bruno and the rest of Audubon Rockies’ community naturalists over the past year, as the pandemic upturned traditional classrooms.
Mr. Bruno explains:
“How do we reinvent the wheel? How do we do these programs differently than we have to make sure that we’re honoring people’s safety and managing it in a responsible way, but also trying to create programming?”
“He really had to rethink that whole program, how it works, how to make it run on its own and also how to safely bring people there,” said Jacelyn Downey, Audubon Rockies’ education programs manager. “You’re used to doing things one way for several years. Then, like everything else, we had to change everything. He found a new way to make it work. The families and everybody just wanted to get out, but they wanted to get out safely, and he really helped facilitate that.”
For Katie Navin at CAEE, the value of such programs during a trying year was substantial.
“There are just so many socio-emotional benefits to being outdoors during a traumatic time. That programming became really, really important,” she said.