As Leonardo da Vinci once said, “La naturaleza es el major maestro” – “Nature is the best teacher.”
That may be true, but Eugenio Calderon is no slouch either.
Calderon, who graduated from UWM last year, is one of the Shedd Aquarium’s first bilingual educators on staff. The Chicago-based aquarium is best known for its stunning fresh- and saltwater exhibits housing over 32,000 animals, but the staff at the Shedd have additional missions: To protect endangered species and their habitats and to rescue and rehabilitate wildlife in need.
One of the best ways to do both is to educate people about wildlife and the natural world. That’s where Calderon comes in – or rather, goes out – into classrooms around Chicago to talk to students about the environment and the animals we share it with.
Here are three things you need to know about Eugenio Calderon and his work at the Shedd.
1. The Shedd Aquarium is expanding its programs to reach a wider audience – including Spanish-speakers.
While the aquarium welcomes over two million guests each year, the staff want to make sure they’re reaching people beyond the building’s walls. So, the Shedd Aquarium has several community outreach efforts, including in-school programs and educator-led nature field trips.
But when roughly one in five Chicagoans speak Spanish, teaching those programs can get a bit tricky. The solution was to make sure the aquarium’s educators can speak Spanish, too.
“This is the first time since the Shedd opened that they have hired bilingual staff, explicitly as part of their work position. They’re expected to speak Spanish and know Spanish,” Calderon said. As one of those bilingual education facilitators, he’s helping to re-shape the education program to make it more accessible for all.
“We are developing trainings for future bilingual staff as they got on-boarded. We’re establishing the foundation of role and discussing what that looks like for the future,” he said. “We’re also discussing how … to support bilingual learners and audiences in different settings.”
But Calderon and his colleagues aren’t stopping there. One of their current projects is to develop trainings for the staff to learn about universal design – creating lessons that can suit different learning styles for people who may be neurodivergent or have disabilities.
2. Calderon excels at making connections with people from different backgrounds.
That’s due in large part to his own unique background. Calderon was born and raised in Mexico but moved with his family to Wisconsin when his father was offered a job in Appleton. Then in high school, Calderon spent a year as an exchange student in Italy.
When it came time for college, he knew he wanted to go to a school that would allow him to continue studying around the world. UWM was a perfect fit. Calderon, who is interested in animals as well as in globetrotting, chose a global studies major with a sustainability track. That enabled him to study abroad in South Africa, where he assisted in research to safely deter elephants from entering human villages, and in Costa Rica, where he participated in a wildlife rehab-and-release internship. He was also a student researcher at UWM.
“The global sustainability (track) offered me the opportunity to combine environmental science and conservation on one end and in the other end, more of the geography and the politics and the cultural dimensions everything that I like to learn about,” he said.
With an education in both conservation and cultural communication, Calderon was a perfect fit for the Shedd Aquarium’s bilingual education facilitator role.
“I love (that I) was able to bring my language skills and a lot of my intercultural and cross-cultural experiences into this role,” Calderon added. “I get to actually talk about animals and teach about animals, but I also get to focus on the sociological dimensions of conservation, which is extremely important.”
3. Everyone can enjoy learning about nature, no matter what language they speak.
As a bilingual education facilitator, Calderon’s job is to teach a variety of classes: Virtual programs, in-nature programs at local parks, and classroom programs.
“I go to schools and I teach lessons in wildlife conservation and biodiversity,” he explained. “We do a program called ‘Learn with Animals.’ We go into a classroom, kindergarten through eighth grade, and we either bring a turtle or snake from the animal ambassadors at the Shedd. We’ll teach a lesson on snakes or and adaptations of their habitats (for example), … and then the kids get to build a habitat for the animal.”
The activities are tailored to the grade level, and the lesson is tailored to the language the students speak.
“We have to consider, what if an entire classroom has students that are both Spanish and English speakers, or some of them only speak Spanish, or some of them only speak English?” Calderon said.
There’s culture to consider, too. What might be common knowledge in one culture may not be in another, and common knowledge is closely tied to language. That’s where his multicultural and linguistic experiences come in handy. Calderon knows how to communicate across those divides and bring all of his audience into his lessons.
That’s important, whether he’s working with teens during their summer internships through the Shedd Aquarium or leading a class on a walk through Humboldt Park.
“My favorite program is by far nature field trips. Some of these kids have never been out in nature, and being able to give them a positive experience is something very empowering and very powerful,” Calderon said. “To foster that spark for nature is one of my favorite things about my job.”
If you’re disappointed that you’re missing out on Calderon’s lessons, don’t worry – this coming year, he’ll be giving behind-the-scenes look of the Shedd’s shark exhibits as part of the aquarium’s virtual programming in English and Spanish.
By Sarah Vickery, College of Letters & Science