Students take their bat knowledge out into the community

This past June the Discovery Center hosted The Center for Conservation Leadership  for a week of education and exploring.  During that time, we presented a bat education program where we introduced the students to our education bat Penelope, along with our acoustic monitoring efforts.  They learned the importance of bats to our natural world and about the threat of White Nose Syndrome, which was just found in their home state of IL last winter.  When we conduct programs to groups here at the Center, it is our hope and goal to impact the lives of folks by making them think about the topic and their place in nature, it goes beyond our hopes and dreams when students take it a step further.  Two students from that program, Jonny and Paula, decided to take the information they learned here to the next level- they created their own bat education program and are now delivering it in their community.  Pictured here, Jonny and Paula, aka The Bat Team, gave a presentation about the importance of bats to a group of families from Barbara Waller's Cool Learning Experience. They are looking forward to taking their show on the road to Neal School and the Waukegan Public Library later this week. Great work, Bat Team!  We are so proud of them and my naturalist heart can’t stop smiling J 

Jonny and Paula, aka "The Bat Team"
Photo courtesy of The Center for Conservation Leadership