Women Mind the Water Podcast Series: Lexi Doudera, Maine

Submitted as part of the Women Mind the Water (WMW) digital stories project produced by Pam Ferris-Olson, in conjunction with Stories from Main Street and the traveling exhibition "Water/Ways." This story is one in a series created for a podcast in 2020-21, featuring regional and international artists whose inspiration blends conversation, activism, science, and water. Find earlier stories from the WMW initiative by searching for "Women Mind the Water" on this website.

Lexi Doudera is founder and Executive Director of Saltwater Classroom, a non-profit with a focus of educating youngsters about the importance of our oceans and the need for sustainable practices to ensure the future of our oceans. Lexi holds degrees in Marine Biology and Environmental Studies from Northeastern University. Lexi started a 501c (3) nonprofit as a way to educate young people about issues that affect the world’s oceans. Saltwater Classroom teaches youngsters in grades 4 through 6 about ocean stewardship. For listeners who might be wondering if Lexi’s work fits within the definition of artivist. The answer is a resounding YES! Fueled by her passion for the ocean, Lexi has designed a creative vision for inspiring young people to take action.

Pam Ferris-Olson (00:00): All right, so let's get this started. Today on the Women Mind the Water podcast I'm speaking with Lexi Doudera. Lexi is the founder and executive director of Saltwater Classroom. A nonprofit with a focus of educating youngsters about the importance of our oceans and the need for sustainable practices to ensure the future of our oceans. The Women Mind the Water podcast engages artists in conversation about their work, and explores their connection with the ocean. Through these stories, Women Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.

Pam Ferris-Olson (00:41): Our guest today is Lexi Doudera. Lexi holds degrees in marine biology and environmental studies from Northeastern University. Lexi started a 501 C3 nonprofit as a way to educate young people about issues that affect the world's oceans. Saltwater Classroom teaches youngsters in grades four through six about ocean stewardship.

Pam Ferris-Olson (01:06): Saltwater Classrooms offers week long workshops that connect students through marine environment. Hands-on lessons are strengthened with a web-based platform that connects kids from across the globe and encourages them to share their passion for the ocean. For listeners who might be wondering if Lexi's work fits within the definition of artivist, my answer is a resounding yes. Fueled by her passion for the ocean, Lexi has designed to create a vision for inspiring young people to take action, not to mention that there is a good deal of artistry in creating educational curriculum that will engage young learners. Welcome Lexi. Thank you for being my guest on the Women Mind the Water podcast. I'm excited to learn more about Saltwater Classroom.

Lexi Doudera (01:55): Thank you, and thank you for having me and thank you for the great introduction.

Pam Ferris-Olson (02:00): You're very welcome. I'd like to begin by asking how you came to found Saltwater Classroom, as opposed to the many other paths you might've followed given your background in environmental studies and marine biology.

Lexi Doudera (02:14): Once I had the idea for Saltwater Classroom it was almost like I had no choice but to follow the path that I was on. The idea first came to me it was during my undergraduate years, I went to Northeastern in Boston. I was actually studying marine biology and environmental studies as you mentioned, but I was in Vina del Mar, a coastal city in Chile. I saw an opportunity to have young students learn about the oceans, but also connect with one another. At the time my interests were in urban coastal sustainability, and I was learning about environmental education as a pathway for communities, cities, countries to grow sustainably, and I was also volunteering in a fifth grade classroom. I just, this idea came to me. There was a lot of similarities between the coastline here in Maine, where I grew up, and the coastline in Chile. I had this idea and ran with it. I went back to Northeastern in Boston and developed the curriculum and the rationale and the business plan and everything as my senior thesis, my senior capstone project at Northeastern, and six months after I graduated we did our first program.

Pam Ferris-Olson (03:38): How did you come to settle on the age group that Saltwater Classroom works with?

Lexi Doudera (03:43): We work with grades three through six, nine to 12 years old. The reason that we work with these students is, there's actually a lot of different reasons. They're old enough to understand complex topics like cause and effect and action and impact. They're able to understand their global role in society and the larger picture a little bit more so. That's a big piece of it, they're old enough to grasp some complex ideas, which is certainly necessary when you're talking about the ocean. But they're still very curious and asking all kinds of questions and unencumbered by social or cultural things.

Lexi Doudera (04:32): They're still in very formative years. There's been lots of studies that have shown that this is the most effective age range to work with in terms of environmental education, and for those reasons really. They're also really competent, talkative agents of change. They have amazing peer influence on other people their age, but also their parents, their families, their communities. If you excite kids about something, you almost can't hold them back at a certain point. That's another thing that is really important. It's a really fun age range to work with, the kids are always so curious and so eager to learn and really excited about learning still.

Pam Ferris-Olson (05:23): Have you done it alone or did you have a team to help you develop your vision? What were the particular skills or assets that you felt were most important to putting together a team?

Lexi Doudera (05:35): Certainly I haven't done it alone, been very lucky and fortunate to have a great network of people behind us throughout the whole process. At the beginning, it was my family and friends that stepped up to help run our first program in 2018 in Camden, Maine my hometown. Since then they've continued to be incredibly supportive, we've grown our board of directors and engaged other community members and things like that, businesses and local support that way. But I'd say overall in terms of our core team, the real assets and attributes that we look for are a commitment to the vision of Saltwater Classroom. A belief in the power of education to bring about sustainable change for our oceans and our environment. I'd say flexibility and ability to adapt, and as we are a young nonprofit there's a lot of that, so I think that's another inherent attribute.

Pam Ferris-Olson (06:45): How do you go about developing a curriculum? What are the most important elements that you focus on in the Saltwater Classroom's curriculum?

Lexi Doudera (06:55): I certainly don't have a formal background in education. We did our first curriculum that still to this day serves as the backbone of our Saltwater Classroom core curriculum. But I really just based it off of my college education in marine biology. I looked at the themes and things that we were learning that I learned over the course of my four years studying Marine biology, and based lessons and activities and topics and things off of that. Our curriculum starts with a really broad introduction to our planet's oceans, instilling in students a global perspective that's necessary when talking about the oceans. Then zeroes in on some narrower topics. We learn about the coast and coastal environments, marine life, the seawater itself. Then we always conclude talking about today's ocean, so the ways that we're connected to the ocean, but also the issues facing the oceans today.

Pam Ferris-Olson (08:00): Do you cover big themes like ocean acidification or is that too large or too complex?

Lexi Doudera (08:11): No, we certainly do. There's a piece of it in our core curriculum, and then we actually we're developing deep dive workshops as well that are more focused on even narrower topics. So the first one that we did, we did a virtual program of it in February, and that was focused entirely on coral reefs. When addressing coral reefs ocean acidification is a big issue, so we covered it more indepthly there. But yeah we would definitely cover that in our core curriculum as well. Then to your point before, to your question before, the core tenets of our curriculum and there certainly are some, I'd say the first thing that it's hands-on and experience-based. As much as we can, we're getting students into the environment, whether they're coastal and they can go actually to the intertidal zone or even in their backyard or in their local park, having students experience the education in an outdoor setting and in a natural environment.

Lexi Doudera (09:10): So hands-on having students do some of the science or learn as much as they can with their hands, and experience-based making it a whole immersive experience that sticks with them and that they remember, and that sort of thing. The second thing is it's interdisciplinary, rooted in science and conservation, but incorporating art and music and language, because one of my core beliefs is that as humans we connect to the ocean in all number of ways, and our education about the ocean should reflect this. That's part of the reason why we do include art in our curriculum or music or any number of things, but just trying to inspire students who might not be inclined to math or science or what have you to care about the oceans and learn about the oceans. Then the last piece is that our education and our approach is global. We inspire students to not only think globally about our oceans, but connect with students that are learning in Mexico or Maine or wherever, connect and bridge cultural differences and geographic distance to come together and unite over the ocean.

Pam Ferris-Olson (10:32): Are you saying during one of the sessions that you actually have the kids go to computers and work with students that you've worked with before? How do you connect students today from Camden, Maine to Chile?

Lexi Doudera (10:49): We haven't done a workshop in Chile yet. I have big plans to return to the school that I first had this idea for and do some programming there. But the way that the connection happens is through a technology linked education, a web web-based portal where students can access material, but connect with one another as well. This component is only poised to grow, and as we pursue more funding sources to further develop this component [inaudible 00:11:21] more and more. We have a pretty developed prototype for an app where the students would access news stories or log on and earn progress towards badges about doing beach cleanups or whatever, but also connecting with different students.

Pam Ferris-Olson (11:42): That's very exciting. As I stated in the intro, there is an artistry in developing a nonprofit and nurturing it to support a vision. Can you describe for me how you went from that vision to a working creation?

Lexi Doudera (11:59): Yes. I think we're still a work in progress and I think always will be, there's certainly a lot of merit in the growth mindset and never reaching perfection or never stopping, always reaching higher. I think the biggest thing, I mean the support that we have had from individuals and people close to me, but also the community, the Maine community and people even outside of Maine, the support is one thing that certainly has helped us on this journey. But then the second piece I'd say that continuously refuels us is the response that we got from our programs. The students really love the work that we're doing and they get a lot out of it and learn a lot and have a lot of fun while doing it. I think that is always another piece, that really keeps us going.

Pam Ferris-Olson (13:01): You did say you went back to school and got some education in business. Obviously you can have a great vision, but if you don't have some way to sell your idea, you have to have students or classrooms or after school activities that want to participate. Could you tell me a story about an activity that exemplifies what Saltwater Classroom is trying to accomplish?

Lexi Doudera (13:32): Yeah, certainly. I think a couple examples come to mind. The first thing is one of the first lessons that we do in our curriculum. We have students look at a globe and estimate the percentage of our planet that is ocean and the percentage that is land. After we do this their estimates we go on to explore how the percentage of our planet, 71% of the planet surface is ocean and only 29 is land. We talk about the implications of this and why it's called planet earth when in fact it's mostly ocean. The conversation among the students usually revolves around us being humans and living on the land and we're the ones that do the naming so we call it planet earth. Then the implications of that, that the earth is the primary focus maybe the ocean has been neglected, whatever.

Lexi Doudera (14:35): The conversations that come out of this are always, I think getting at what we hope to inspire students to do, which is just think a little differently about the oceans than they might have. But that's the kind of thinking that we inspire. One of our final activities is always a community or a coastal cleanup. We have students in around their school or in their neighborhood or down by the shore do a cleanup and find the litter and trash in their area. Then we analyze it and look at it and brainstorm creative solutions to issues that they found, whether it's cigarette butts or straws or fishing line. They think creatively about solutions and present them. That's another I think activity that really speaks to the focus and mission of-

Pam Ferris-Olson (15:38): Have you worked with kids that aren't based on the coast?

Lexi Doudera (15:44): We have not done an in-person workshop too far inland. There's been schools that are 45 minutes or so from the coast. But I'm trying to think, some of our participants for our virtual workshop that we've done over the past year, a couple of our virtual workshops we're more inland focused. Initially our program was really focused on coastal environments, but we have since adopted a lot of our lessons and activities to be done in places that are not coastal because the ocean influences us all regardless of where we live. That's definitely a piece of it, and we're going to continue to focus on our inland ocean connection as well.

Pam Ferris-Olson (16:38): I know from my personal experience that kids can be great teachers. What have you learned from the kids you've worked with?

Lexi Doudera (16:47): We're constantly learning from them, it's amazing. They really are, I mean it's just endless and something I'm so grateful for to be able to learn from them. I think the biggest thing is just learning what they're curious about and what they ask questions about and what sparks the curiosity in them.

Pam Ferris-Olson (17:10): Is there anything else you might say to listeners who are considering charting their own path as a means to encourage action to protect the oceans and her creatures?

Lexi Doudera (17:25): The piece that I always say when people ask what we can do to help the oceans or what my advice is, is always to keep learning and keep seeking out new information, and learning new things about the ocean and just keep forming this relationship that we have with the sea and with the ocean, and let it be formed by the ocean as well. But my biggest thing is to keep learning, to be curious and to be open to new things and just embrace that piece of it. I think that the oceans are full of endless knowledge and insight, and if we just tune into it a little bit more, I think there's lots that we can learn. That's our position at Saltwater Classroom, we believe that there's a new wave of ocean education and we're working to build this new wave of ocean education, and we certainly would welcome anyone to be a part of it.

Pam Ferris-Olson (18:33): It's been very interesting talking with you today and learning about Saltwater Classroom.

Lexi Doudera (18:38): Thank you. Yeah it's been a pleasure talking with you as well. Happy to share some of our experiences, it's been a wild ride but it's inspiring. It's wonderful work and I'm very lucky and grateful to be doing what I do.

Pam Ferris-Olson (18:51): Very good. I'd like to remind our listeners that I have been speaking with Lexi Doudera for the Women Mind the Water podcast series. This series can be viewed on womenmindthewater.com. An audio only version of this podcast is available on the Women Mind the Water website, on iTunes and on Spotify. Women Mind the Water is grateful to Jane Rice for the song women of water. All rights for the Women Mind the Water name and local belong to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson, thank you for listing.

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Asset ID: 2021.02.18
Themes: Education, students, travel, nature, conservation, water, salt water
Date recorded: June 24, 2021
Length of recording: 19:26 m
Related traveling exhibition: Water/Ways
Sponsor or affiliated organization: Women Mind the Water
More information: https://womenmindthewater.com