Polly Diffenbaugh

Introduction

Being a biologist has always been part of my story. Growing up in Washington state, I spent much of my childhood outdoors, exploring the forests around my home. I was happiest climbing trees, often reaching higher than my two-story house. I knew I would eventually become a science teacher, but it took some exploration and adventure to figure out how. In high school and college, I worked at informal science institutions like the Exploratorium in San Francisco and the Seattle Aquarium in Seattle, which deepened my interest in informal science education. After graduating from Stanford with a degree in Biology, I returned to my alma mater to pursue a master's in science education and a teaching credential.

Almost fifteen years later, with three children and a career in education, I returned to work at the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Currently, I am a senior clinical associate and instructor for pre-service teachers. Since starting at this position in 2009, I have directly mentored over 50 new teachers and taught hundreds more. I volunteer as a docent at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in Woodside, California, earned my California Naturalist certification, and developed a personal practice of nature journaling. All these experiences have shaped my vision of supporting my local community in the California Bay Area by helping people develop a sense of place and belonging.

Returning to school for a second master’s in biology through the Global Field Program at Project Dragonfly has been a dream of mine since the late 90s when I first began incorporating inquiry-based teaching in my classrooms. This program has allowed me to connect to both my community and conservation. I believe fostering a deep connection to a place increases a person’s commitment to conservation and protecting the environment (Ardoin, 2006). I felt this when I moved to the Midwest in 2004. Newly arrived with three young children and no support network, I felt disconnected. What helped me reconnect to the land was learning about Indiana’s native plants, which helped me understand and appreciate the environment. I also transformed my backyard, replacing invasive honeysuckle with native plants that supported local wildlife. When I returned to California in 2009, I brought with me the belief that knowing a place is crucial for fostering connection (Moseley et al., 2015).

However, I’ve learned that not everyone has the same relationship to nature, and different people have different needs for connection. Social, ethical, and political values all shape a person’s sense of belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2006). As I explored this idea, I became more convinced that those who feel a stronger connection to their environment are more likely to care about conservation (Korach & McConnell, 2021). I also understand that there are many ways to connect with nature, and we need different approaches to help people form these bonds.

This portfolio depicts my work over the last three years as I have supported local communities by fostering a connection to place through stewardship and conservation. My approach draws inspiration from Indigenous practices of maintaining a relationship with the land (Kimmerer, 2013; Snively & Corsiglia, 2000) and I am honored to live and work on the traditional lands of the Ramaytush and Muwekma Ohlone people. Throughout my work, I’ve connected these ideas to tangible actions, such as engaging in local stewardship projects, learning about California’s ecosystems, and exploring how to help others cultivate a sense of belonging. A huge part of my education has been to travel through the Earth Expeditions program. I was fortunate to go to Baja, Namibia, Borneo and Kenya throughout the program and I learned so much about communities, conservation and working with a team. These travels also increased my own comfort and desire to travel more! As part of this process, I also created a website, Polly's Learning Journey, to document my journey, progress, and experiences. Completing this program has been a culmination of years of personal and professional growth, and I am excited to continue building connections with my community through conservation and education.

Project 1: Different ways of knowing as a way to connect to place, integrating traditional ecological knowledge with local place based understanding

In my first Earth Expeditions course to Baja, my synthesis paper focused on connections to traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). I have long wondered how we can connect more deeply to where we live, and the reciprocal relationships in TEK help incorporate these ideas. Combining different ways of knowing, including TEK in education, opens pathways into science content and allows students and scientists to solve problems and consider solutions beyond Western ways of knowing (Kimmerer, 2002).

Traditional science education often excludes the long-term observational data that local people understand. Additionally, teaching observational skills through nature journaling (Laws & Lygren, 2020), which integrates personal experience and place-based knowledge (van Bavel et al., 2020), can help students make better observations. We’ve lost this connection to place by no longer teaching plant identification or local ecosystems. Children today are less likely to play outside and connect with nature, as Richard Louv describes in Last Child in the Woods (2008). Considering how to increase both my own knowledge and that of my future teachers became an important part of my work.

This paper was my first in the program and helped me explore why this topic mattered to me. It deepened my interest in Indigenous ways of knowing and solidified my focus on place-based research and learning about California. It also allowed me to wrestle with the distinction between natural history learning and TEK, helping me see that this knowledge can help all people strengthen their connection to place. Throughout the Earth Expeditions course in Baja, we learned about indigenous uses of plants. Some of our adventures are shown here in photos 1-4 below.

Project 2: Phenology and long term observations as a way to connect to place

Thinking about TEK led me to explore more about how these ideas might show up in other places. Local ecological knowledge has long included connections to phenology, or the timing of life stages in plants and animals (Piao et al., 2019). Phenological relationships relate to traditional knowledge and help people connect with place. Climate change has shifted when plants flower or leaf out (Schwartz, 1994), making these relationships increasingly important for understanding species interactions.

The National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) was established in 2007 (Schwartz, Betancourt, and Weltzin, 2012) to collect and store data and oversee community science projects like Nature’s Notebook. I used Nature’s Notebook data to compare leaf bud times for three main California tree species in the Bay Area across two years. In 2017, California received more than three times the rainfall of 2021, providing a useful comparison. For all species, there was more growth in the wet year (p-value < 0.01), showing water availability significantly influences bud growth. Figure 3 shows the activity curves for all three species in timing of bud burst in the two different years. This project also honed my skills in cleaning data and statistical analysis.

To help teachers incorporate phenology and data sets into their classrooms (Photo 6), I created a workshop focused on these topics and Nature’s Notebook. Since this project I have incorporated nature journaling prompts considering "How do we know it is spring?" or "What do you notice about the different stages of leaf development on this tree?" to deepen understanding of phenology. Observations of bud burst, flowering, and timing have strengthened my connection to these changes. Two years later, on my Earth Expedition in Borneo with the Hutan Kinabatangan Orangutan Conservation Programme, I saw how phenology supports their work tracking and observing orangutans. Photo 5 shows one of the food species that both humans and orangutans can eat. In Kenya, we analyzed phenology data to study vine changes during an inquiry project and used these techniques for ecological monitoring. This foundational project enriched my future work in various places because I had a basis for understanding phenology and how some of the big changes might affect plant and animal communities all over the world.

Project 5: How does course feedback contribute to course belonging?

I decided to focus on feedback as a component of my role as a student leader because of the importance of prompt and useful feedback as a way for students to feel confident and to improve (Getzlaf, et al., 2009). Even though peer feedback, which is effective and can increase student engagement and learning (Van Popta, et al., 2017), is the most common form of feedback in Dragonfly courses. I have noticed in my own classes, that I and my classmates really appreciated feedback directly from course instructors. During the course, as the student leader, I was providing feedback after the peer rounds and I did more than 50% of the feedback, including 100% for a few of the community engagement labs. I worked with 2 students more in depth to support them and help them not fall behind. I received written feedback from people in the class and it was primarily positive. Some students felt like I gave sufficient feedback, others thought they would have liked more. I think that feedback does contribute to belonging in a course and I also think it is not sufficient.

Overall, this was a challenging class for me to be a student leader. Because of personal challenges, my instructor did not provide much feedback, so I felt like I had to give more and ensure that everyone had their materials read by an instructor. Thinking back, I wish that I had asked the instructor to do the main responses, since she had to grade them anyway and I could have worked with smaller groups or checked in during their meetings. This would have allowed me to connect more closely with the students. Additionally, for the group that was missing a member because their work was consistently late, I think it would have been very helpful to be more proactive in joining their group to provide more support.

Programmatically, it would be useful for Project Dragonfly to be more consistent in the ways that they support student leaders. I would have liked to provide more feedback to the students as well as to support them more with peer feedback, but I felt like I was spending more time helping the main instructor stay caught up. Overall, being a student leader is closely related to my work as a graduate student course instructor, which I have done for the past 15 years. I did however learn more about supporting students in this program and I especially enjoyed learning about everyone's communities. I think that this was not as useful as a project for me and could have been better developed if I had had initial questions rather than just supporting students as best as I could during the process.

Project 6: Sparking Student Curiosity through Nature Journaling 

One of the requirements for the masters degree is called the author leadership challenge. For this project, I prepared an article and a pitch email to send to an editor. This was an interesting set of tasks and I learned a lot from both my own and from reading about other people’s articles and pitches. My article, Sparking Student Curiosity through Nature Journaling, (Figure 5) was published in Edutopia in November 2024. In this article, I use the mnemonic INIWIRMO, standing for “I notice, I wonder, It reminds me of” to describe how teachers might start supporting their students to use nature journaling. This is one of the main tenets of nature journaling as described by Jack Laws in his work (Wild Wonder, INIWIRMO)

I actually did not want to submit my article but decided I might as well because it was entirely written and I had a pitch email for the editor. They got back to me pretty quickly and then it was an easy process to make some edits and then it was published! Also, I now have a direct email connection if I want to pitch another article and I was invited to an internal slack channel with other writers for the platform. I learned that this is possible and I would actually like to support my pre-service teachers to think about what they might like to write.

This article came through my own process as well as my connection with the Wild Wonder Foundation. I have enjoyed my connection to the people who work in the organization and have gained many skills and perspectives through working with them. Publishing this made me a little braver and I have a suggestion for a session I would like to present during the next Wild Wonder conference, rather than just being tech support. Before writing this article, I built a website called “My Wild Neighbors” (Figure 6 and 7) full of resources for teachers to use for nature journaling. I use this site in my own classes, to support my own students as well. Because my master plan is to consider how people know they belong to place and to continue to explore place based ideas, I wanted to explore how I might be able to help teachers to use both digital tools like iNaturalist and Seek, and low tech tools to increase observational skills such as nature journaling to support themselves and their students to connect more to place. I wanted my students to really connect with the idea that we do not only need to look for birds and plants when we travel, we can find interesting and varied things to look at right where we live, especially in California, a biological hotspot. 

Bonus Project 7: Travel journals from my Earth Expedition Programs

Throughout Project Dragonfly, in the Global Field Program, we are required to go on three different Earth Expeditions programs. I was lucky enough to go on four, including Baja, Namibia, Borneo and Kenya. Each of these programs include connections to local community based organizations and specialty topics that are directly related to the place they are based in. The Earth Expeditions were my main reason for enrolling as a student in Project Dragonfly.  Throughout the 10 day adventures, we meet with various members of the host organization, complete inquiry projects, give presentations and write journals. I have loved the journals and the reflections that I was able to make based on them. They are both based on what we are doing each day as well as set reflection or journal prompts. I filled mine with drawings and observations as well, traveling with a full set of watercolors (which definitely melted in the heat and humidity of Borneo) and way more art supplies than one should probably have packed in our single allowed carry on bag.

These journals serve as a record of my trips and when I returned, I added photos with captions and then created web pages linked with more reflections and detailed descriptions of my days in the field. I loved this process and throughout the program I kept some things the same, for example I recorded all the food we ate and in each journal I created an ethogram about what I was doing for at least one day. An ethogram is typically used to record animal behavior, for example in Borneo, the Hutan organization had long term (years) worth of data recording what the orangutans were doing every 3 minutes. In my ethograms, I recorded what I was doing every 15 minutes for 24 hours and then figured out how to represent it graphically. Additionally, I decided to start drawing many of the people we met, usually asking them for their signatures in my pages.

I have completed two of my four journals since returning home. They include detailed descriptions of what I did (Examples in Figure 8 and 9) as well as photos of our adventures. I still plan on completing the last two, I am getting pretty close. I am including links to the two completed sites, Baja and Borneo, as well as photo walkthroughs of what I have for Namibia and Kenya.

Conclusion

Completing this program and graduating with a masters in biology has been more than just taking classes and even working on my master plan. I have gained a sense of my own role in conservation. Additionally, my connection to place and people has built and developed in ways I could not even imagine. Recently, as I have been describing this process to my friends and family, I have found that learning and interactions with community organizations around the world, in Baja, Namibia, Borneo and Kenya, have increased my global understanding in ways that I did not even anticipate when I started this program. I can describe and articulate the roles of community organizations and I understand so much more about our global connection to each other. I wanted to travel, I have done that and so much more. 

In my master plan, I explored my own methods of connecting to place and supported members of my community to connect to their place. I changed from thinking that it was simply knowing about the flora and fauna of my area, which I still do strongly connect to, with also forming stronger connections with my community and thinking more about belonging. From completing programs with teachers, leading trips for the Vermilion Sea Institute, and becoming certified as a wilderness first responder, I have been able to explore and expand my own work with people and communities.  Additionally, after traveling sporadically for many years, I have taken 10 international trips besides the four I took with Project Dragonfly since my first time to Baja in July of 2021 with five more planned in the next 12 months. I knew I always wanted to travel, but the personal and confidence gains I made connecting with people and communities in Dragonfly have exponentially increased my interest and excitement to get out into the world. I would love to continue to lead trips and to support people to connect to place and make connections in their communities and while they travel.

Overall, I have learned about being with people in challenging situations. As we stretch and push ourselves out of our comfort zones we are also able to make stronger connections and lifelong friendships. I have valued these experiences and it has allowed me to grow as an outdoor educator and leader.  My adventures have also been local, I have led multiple hikes, introduced people to nature journaling and taken my students on 2-3 field trips each year to connect to California and their places. I love this work and will continue to pursue these goals. My next steps include continuing to support my amazing pre-service teachers to our local California ecosystems, to finally teach my continuing studies course in my community and to continue to lead adventures for others. I love learning and even though I am in the middle of my life, I am just getting started!

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all of my family, especially Suresh, Ro, Ela and Lulu. Thank you Suresh for reading all my papers and providing such useful feedback as “It sounds like you wrote a paper about fences but you really just want to go to Africa.” This was actually very helpful, and I was always able to restructure and create such better work. I learned so much more about writing papers throughout this process!

Thank you to my colleagues at the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP) for their exceptional understanding and support, particularly during my time away to participate in four transformative Earth Expeditions. Your flexibility and belief in me allowed me to grow both personally and professionally, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be part of such a supportive team. Also, thank you to all of my STEP students, especially my supervisory groups from the last few years as you have add to listen to all my whale shark stories and miss me while I was in the field. I appreciate all of you and love to see your growth as professional educators.

To everyone on my Earth Expeditions, it was so wonderful to travel and learn with all of you in Baja, Namibia, Borneo and Kenya.  Most especially, I want to acknowledge our team for Baja 51. That trip really was like a return to adventure after the pandemic lockdown and it really was expressing the #bajamágica. Thank you Kevin for our many check ins and your advice and counsel throughout the program. Thank you also to everyone at the Vermilion Sea Institute, for providing me with opportunities to form long-lasting relationships, deepen my connection to the natural world, and expand my perspective on conservation. Thank you all for being part of this incredible journey.

Personal Statement

Polly Diffenbaugh has a BS in Biological Sciences and a MA in Science Education, both from Stanford University and a MA in Biology from Miami University. She is a teacher educator and Senior Clinical Associate in the Stanford Teacher Education Program, where she has taught elementary and secondary science methods courses for over 14 years. In addition to supervising student teachers, she leads the secondary summer school program and supports all aspects of the teacher preparation process. Outside of the classroom, Polly was a middle and high school science teacher, has been a docent at the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in Woodside, California, since 1997 and became a California Naturalist in 2018. Her love of nature and commitment to environmental education are integral to her work, and she teaches nature journaling to pre-service teachers while incorporating it into her personal practice. In Project Dragonfly, Polly has expanded her global perspective on conservation and community engagement. Her partnership with the Vermilion Sea Institute as a trip leader and ongoing efforts to connect people with their local environments reflect her passion for fostering a sense of belonging and stewardship in both her students and the broader community.