Peggy Harte
Youth Education Program Manager, Center for Community and Citizen Science and Program Coordinator, Sacramento Area Science Project
Peggy Harte develops citizen science curriculum as well as professional learning opportunities for K-12 educators, engaging with students and teachers across a variety of projects ongoing at the Center for Community and Citizen Science. She is a former classroom teacher and elementary science specialist with over 20 years of experience. Among many projects she supports at the center, Peggy is currently directly supporting educators (both formal and informal) through the CitSci on the Student Farm project as well as the STEM Rural Valley Partnership, focusing on how citizen science projects engage students in deepening their connection to the environment as well as their understanding of the Next Generation Science Standards and the application of Common Core State Standards.
Field Trip to Rush Ranch
Exploring Estuaries, Science, and Language
Authors: Peggy Harte, Becca VanArnam, Kimberly Renae Evans, Carly Davis
California’s Biodiversity Day and Latino Conservation Week 2025: Students Celebrate Nature During Biodiversity Day Event
Each year when I have the opportunity to celebrate California’s Biodiversity Day on a school campus, I am reminded of the tremendous power of curiosity. Spending time with future leaders (who also happen to be nine) reminds me of how pointing out leaves, bugs, and birds can open doors to scientific thinking, care for place, and community belonging.
Statewide Study Taps 3,000 Students to Research Thiamine Deficiency that Sets Salmon Spinning
The UC Davis School of Education
recently highlighted the
Spinning Salmon Program and its impact on high school students
and STEM Education. The development of the program over the
years has engaged more students through citizen science, giving
them the opportunity to learn and contribute directly to science
and study salmon thiamine deficiency.
Teaching Tanzanian Educators How to Engage Their Students in Science and English Language Instruction by Exploring Outdoor Spaces
On April 18, 2025, thirty passionate educators from across Tanzania (and beyond) gathered for an interactive workshop designed to transform the way science and English are taught in schools—by taking learning outside.
Empowering Youth and Teachers through Science in Tanzanian School Gardens: A Cross-Continental Collaboration
Project Duration
2021-present
Location:
Marangu District, Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania
“What would make you proud to present your work?” Spinning Salmon Showcase celebrates student science, storytelling and stewardship
What happens when you invite students who’ve been raising salmon, collecting data, and diving into real-world environmental challenges to share their science with the world?
You get a room full of paper mâché, research posters, dioramas, personal essays, poems, storytelling, and more!
Youth Voices in Action: Advocacy and Outreach in the Spinning Salmon Program
By Peggy Harte, Youth Education Program Manager, UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science
When the Spinning Salmon Program launched five years ago, it set out to engage youth in emergent science, spark curiosity and foster a deeper connection between youth and the researchers focused on salmon in California. Through participatory science, the program has done more than build knowledge and engage youth—it has shown young people that they have the skills to take an active role in scientific discovery and environmental stewardship.
Statewide Study Taps 3,000 Students to Research Thiamine Deficiency that Sets Salmon Spinning
High schoolers' efforts provide model for community-based conservation
When researchers from UC Davis and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife observed juvenile salmon swimming in spinning patterns and dying at increased rates, they turned to the Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) and GEAR UP STEM Rural Valley Partnership to create a student-centered research study that enabled more than 3,000 students across five California counties to become climate stewards to their local ecosystems.
From Schoolyard to Biodiversity Hotspot
Fourth Graders Join the City Nature Challenge
This spring, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the City Nature Challenge, I had the joy of watching a group of Dixon 4th graders transform their school campus. Eyes wide as they were amazed by the power of their own observations as, in their eyes, their school yard was transformed from the schoolyard they engage with every day into a thriving field site where they were able to make observations as real scientists.
2025 Field Trip to the Nimbus Hatchery
Spinning Salmon Students Experience Science in Action at Nimbus Hatchery
Last week, Youth Education Program
Manager, Peggy Harte, was able to join a group of students
participating in the Spinning
Salmon program, taking their research questions and learnings
into the field with a visit to the Nimbus Fish
Hatchery.
Project Update: GEAR UP Collaboration Launches Data Collection with FieldScope!
We are excited to share a
significant milestone for the Spinning Salmon Project: the launch
of Year 4 of student-driven data collection in partnership with
the GEAR UP STEM Rural Valley Partnership! This collaboration is
energizing students with 21st-century tools, empowering them to
explore salmon ecology while supporting GEAR UP’s core goals:
Celebrating California’s 2024 Biodiversity Day
As part of California’s 30×30
initiative—a state-wide effort to conserve 30% of our land and
coastal waters by 2030—Biodiversity Day has become a weeklong
celebration where both professional and budding
naturalists from across the state come together to document
as much biodiversity as they can by contributing to community
science.
Environmental Superheroes of the ELA Classroom Podcast Series
The Environmental Superheroes
of the ELA Classroom podcast collection highlights
stories of California TK-12 educators who teach reading, writing,
listening, and speaking through the lens of environmental
literacy and justice, giving a glimpse into what this type of
work might look like in TK-12 classrooms.
The Center’s Peggy Harte co-developed these podcasts and snapshots with other CAELI members, Tara Kajtaniak and Cheney Munson.
Feature: Spinning Salmon in California WaterBlog
Peggy Harte, UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science, and Abigail Ward, UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences, team up in California WaterBlog to share about the collaboration between scientists and schools in the Spinning Salmon in the Classroom project.
Spring Staff Sightings
Follow the Center's trainings, webinars, and presentations
Catch us if you can! Find our faculty, staff, and students at these events this spring.
Project Update: Connecting Classroom Content in Spinning Salmon Field Trips
“Bye, Spaghetti!” waved one high
schooler as a tiny Chinook salmon, so named Spaghetti, swam out
of a plastic cup and into the murky Sacramento River.
Across the boat ramp at Riverbend Park in Oroville, students
said their farewells to the alevin in their own cups. This
was the last chance for students to get an up close of the fish
they spent raising in their classroom over the last 6 weeks.
Project Update: The Eggs Have Arrived! Spinning Salmon Year Three
Deepening our collaboration and community connections
The Center for Community and Citizen Science has been collaborating with a broad coalition of researchers working to understand the complex puzzle of Thiamine Deficiency Complex (TDC) impacting California’s Central Valley salmon populations.
Spinning Salmon, Year Three: Deepening our Collaboration and Community Connections
Our Center specializes in helping educators and youth work together on real science – youth-focused community and citizen science. An especially powerful aspect of this approach is the opportunity to help youth connect directly with professional scientists, and with local partners in their own communities who are working on environmental challenges. The story of our Spinning Salmon project shows how these connections can evolve over time, as partnerships develop, and new opportunities for collaboration arise.
H.E.A.L.(ing) the Watershed
In May, the Center’s Youth
Education Program Manager, Peggy Harte, joined teachers from
throughout northern California as they came together to celebrate
and share their learnings as participants in the year-long
professional development program, H.E.A.L. (Health,
Environmental Awareness and Literacy).
Project Update: Field Trips Wrap Up Another Successful Year of GEAR UP Partnership
Starting a collaborative community and citizen science project with high schools is no small feat. Try starting it during the pandemic. That’s what we did with the Center’s collaboration with GEAR UP STEM Rural Valley Partnership Spinning Salmon in the Classroom project. After managing a year of distance learning in 2021 and piloting in-person content in 2022, we had so much we were excited to do this year.
Project Update: Field trips connect to classroom learning
Spinning Salmon in the Classroom Project
It’s a cold February morning at River Bend Park in Oroville. We’re standing with UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences’ Carson Jeffres, waiting patiently for the bus to arrive from Red Bluff High School. A truck towing a boat backs down the boat ramp where we’re waiting to meet the high school students that have participated in the Spinning Salmon in the Classroom project this winter.
Collabinar: Catherine Njau and school garden community and citizen science in Tanzania
February 17, 2023
Co-creating an educational and culturally-relevant environmental monitoring program for youth in Northeast Tanzania
Friday, February 17, 2023
12:00 – 1:30 PM PST
GRANT AWARDED TO CONTINUE SPINNING SALMON IN THE CLASSROOM
Solano County Office of Education has received a NOAA B-WET grant that will allow for the expansion of the Spinning Salmon program into Solano County through collaboration with the Center for Community and Citizen Science.
New Publication and Webinar Series: Teacher Call to Action for Environmental Literacy
As educators and researchers, the Center for Community and Citizen Science is focused on joining young people in the work of learning, doing, and using science to improve the world we share. This means thinking about young people as community leaders and people who do science. We have been working to support educators and educational leaders at both the district and state levels to better understand ways in which citizen science and environmental literacy more broadly can be used to deepen both student learning and development of environmental science agency.
Engaging College Opportunity Programs, Researchers and Students through Citizen Science: Reimagining Possibilities of STEM and CTE
In January of 2020, the UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science (CCCS) began a new research practice partnership exploring STEM opportunities and developing teacher professional development with the college opportunity program GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), serving students across Glenn, Colusa, and Tehama counties.
Professional Learning Opportunity: Get Back Time By Forefronting Science
April 20, 2021
This workshop highlighted ways in which elementary teachers can plan for science even with limited time for student contact by forefronting science within integrated lessons. We explored the Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) and look at ways the EP&Cs have been integrated into other content area frameworks. Participants left with a co-designed grade level resource to allow for integrated unit planning that places science at the core.
Birds Near and Far – Students investigate local environmental phenomena on campus and at a local pond
Article by: Erin Bridges Bird, Peggy Harte, and Heidi L. Ballard (Originally Posted on NSTA)
Original Article on NSTA: https://www.nsta.org/science-and-children/science-and-children-septemberoctober-2020/birds-near-and-far
Science and Children—September/October 2020 (Volume 58, Issue 1)
USING CITIZEN SCIENCE TO SUPPORT SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING NEEDS DURING COVID-19 TO ENGAGE STUDENTS AND CAREGIVERS
Article by Peggy Harte M.ed. on Classroom Science
Using Environmental Literacy as the Through Line, All Standards All Students: A Focus on Equity and Access
Environmental Literacy, Environmental Principles & Concepts, Next Generation Science Standards, Incremental Infusion
Using Environmental Literacy as the Through Line, All Standards All Students: A Focus on Equity and Access
BY MARGARET (PEGGY) HARTE, MED|NOVEMBER 17, 2020
Environmental Literacy, Environmental Principles & Concepts, Next Generation Science Standards, Incremental Infusion
Supporting Scientific Discovery at Home
With schools currently closed,
parents face the daunting task of engaging their children in
learning at home. To meet this challenge, our center’s Innovator
Fellow, Peggy Harte, created the “Supporting
Scientific Discovery at Home a Parent’s Guide” to assist
parents in encouraging children to think deeply to explore and
discover the world.
Outside Wonder Lab
Engaging in citizen science at home
Schools may be closed, but the citizen science fun can continue! For example our CCS Innovator Fellow, Peggy Harte has initiated the Outside Wonder Lab Project to help families learn about their backyards and nearby open spaces while practicing responsible social distancing.
Join your county’s Outside Wonder
Lab Project (all listed
here) on iNaturalist to discover the creatures that have been
sharing your space. Take the first step by going out into your
yard, then start observing. Using iNaturalist you can
capture pictures of your observations, identify the species you
have discovered, and share your findings. Even if we are all
physically apart, this project provides an opportunity to learn
from each other while contributing to a global database that
scientists can use to better understand and protect
nature. In the past few days, our Yolo
County community has sighted Western Fence Lizards, Sierran
treefrogs, American Avocets, and over 2000 other species!
New Video: Gardens & Citizen Science Project in Woodland Elementary Schools
The Center for Community and Citizen Science is
happy to share this new video, produced by our partner Yolo
County Office of Education, describing our collective work on
citizen science in school gardens. The video introduces our
ongoing Gardens & Citizen Science Project, and profiles the work
teachers are doing to implement citizen science school gardens,
in Woodland, California! Check out the video here.
NEW PAPER: SHIFTING K-5 SCIENCE INSTRUCTION WITH NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS CURRICULUM ADOPTION
In 2016, the State Board of Education set out to change the way students learn science by adopting the Science Framework for California Public Schools. The new framework is designed to help students deepen their knowledge in four disciplines rather than having shallow understandings on many topics. It also emphasizes what students do with their understanding of science is more important than what they know. This significant shift in the curriculum can revolutionize how students learn and practice science, but it is crucial to prepare K-5 teachers for this transition.
Congratulations to Peggy and DeAnn on a Successful Summit!
by Michael P. Montgomery
On October 1, the Center’s CCS Innovator Fellow, Peggy Harte, traveled
with DeAnn Tenhunfeld to Sacramento to present at a California
Expanded Learning Summit for after-school educators and
administrators. Their talk, “Engaging Students in STEM through
Citizen Science,” discussed citizen science’s growing role in
elementary classrooms, and was attended by nearly 50
participants.
