Spring Branch ISD Featured News

Ryan Beeler, an environmental science teacher at Spring Woods High School, has been selected to receive the national Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators. It’s the latest in many top honors earned by a former city police officer who found his true calling in the classroom.

This special award recognizes outstanding K-12 teachers who have innovative approaches to environmental education and use the natural environment as a learning context for their students. 

The White House Council on Environmental Quality partners with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to administer the award. Every year, up to 20 teachers from 10 EPA regions are selected for the honor, which is designed to support and encourage environmental education in local classrooms and curriculums.

Beeler learned that he won this award in the modern way – he opened an email notice and there it was. He couldn’t believe it at first so he phoned his wife.

“I made her double check that the email was real and not a hoax,” he recalls. “For me, the Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators was a vindication of all the hard work my students and I do to raise awareness about the environment as well as the changes we are trying to make on campus to protect it, and Spring Branch ISD.”

“This is truly an honor,” Beeler added, “and I am so thankful to be part of a district that recognizes the importance of taking small steps towards environmental sustainability at both the campus and district levels.”

Beeler has taught environmental systems and Advanced Placement (AP) environmental science at Spring Woods High for six years. A former Nashville, Tenn., police officer, he started his high school career here as a Teach for America corps member. 

Beeler decided to change career paths after tutoring youth in a Nashville after-school program. He wanted to help others make good choices early, rather than arrest them later for bad ones. “I decided I would rather work with young people as a teacher than continue putting them in the back of my police car,” he has said.

The interest Beeler sparks in his students about environmental responsibilities, the human ecological “footprint” and civic engagement led to creation of Spring Woods High “share tables” where uneaten cafeteria food was made available to students who may need food, or donated to others in the Spring Branch community.

Last year, more than 1,000 pounds of fruit and more than 3,000 unopened drinks were diverted through the program from local landfills to students or local homeless shelters.

Also at Spring Woods High, he has led and managed an outdoor camping club, The Woods Project, which has provided 70 high school students with first-time summertime experiences in federal and state parks, as well as in recreational areas nationwide.

He has also managed the One Goal program at the high school, which includes one-on-one and group mentoring with 16 first-generation college students from sophomore year in high school through their freshman college-year start last year.

His many teaching honors have piled up. Beeler was named a regional finalist in February as a 2019 H-E-B Excellence in Education Award winner. He was the recipient of a 2018 PTA School Bell Award, and won a Guiding Star Award from a nonprofit parents group as one of the unsung heroes of public education in the region.

“Ryan’s love and passion for education, as well as his enthusiasm for working with people to make this world a better place through education, are greatly recognized,” Spring Woods High Principal Jennifer Collier has said of his notable teaching.

To learn more about this award, visit the PIAEE website.