85. Outdoor Education Job: How Mariah Waters Created Her Own Opportunity

Hey, everybody.

Welcome back to the Naturally Teaching Elementary Podcast.

I'm super excited.

I had my first interview in, I think, like almost 18 months.

I brought you Mariah Waters, and she's going to share her background.

She knows herself best, so I'm going to let her take it away and share a little bit about herself.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Mariah, and I'm a Houston-based environmental educator.

I've been working in environmental education, I would say, probably for the past, nearly the past decade.

And I have a bachelor's degree in marine biology from Texas A&M University at Galveston.

And I also have a master's in nature-based early childhood education from Antioch University in England.

And looking back, it's kind of a funny story because I don't think that I would have predicted this career path for myself at all.

During my time at A&M, I was completely convinced that I was going to become a marine mammal trainer.

You know, like one of the ones that you see teaching dolphins and orcas how to do flips and things.

I just, I loved being out on the water, scuba diving, studying marine animals, and learning about coastal ecosystems.

But it wasn't until my last semester that I took a part-time position with an environmental nonprofit that focused on coastal conservation and education.

And that's really where I feel everything changed for me as far as what I wanted to do with my career.

And in that role, I was able to teach students about the local waterways that they were connected to.

And I did that through classroom workshops where we brought in lessons to schools to teach them about those waterways.

And then another big piece of that role was taking them out into those places outdoors to experience them firsthand through field trips.

So that was so fun and rewarding.

Being able to watch children hold a tiny shrimp for the first time or use scientific tools that they thought were only meant for scientists made me realize how much I loved helping kids discover the natural world just as much as I love studying it myself.

And so that experience eventually led me to pursue my master's.

And in doing so, it completely changed the way I thought about outdoor learning for young children.

It shifted my focus from just teaching children about nature, you know, the factual stuff, to creating experiences that help them build curiosity, confidence, and lasting relationships and connections with the nature around them, which also led me to the recent role that I was in.