Sunsetting of Recent Earthquake Teachable Moments program

54 views
Skip to first unread message

EarthScope

unread,
May 19, 2026, 2:14:55 PM (4 days ago) May 19
to Geophysical Events

Teachable Moments transition

We have an important update to share about one of our long-standing programs, and a new resource to announce.

After careful consideration, EarthScope will be sunsetting our Recent Earthquake Teachable Moments (RETM) program. For about two decades, our team has worked to produce slide decks within 72 hours of a major earthquake, bringing real-time geoscience to classrooms and the public. We are incredibly proud of what this program has delivered, and deeply grateful to the contributors who made each Teachable Moment possible.

While we are saying goodbye to the rapid-response slide deck format, the spirit of Teachable Moments can still be brought to your classroom.

We're thrilled to introduce our new lesson plan, “Creating a Teachable Moment about Earthquakes: From Data to Story”, now available online. Rather than receiving a slide deck from us, your students can become the scientists, investigating real earthquake data from the USGS, the EarthScope-operated NSF National Geophysical Facility, and other sources to build their own Teachable Moments. The lesson is designed for grades 6-12 and college, and can be taught as a single enrichment period, a five-day mini-unit, or scaled into a year-long scaffolded project. It is fully aligned to NGSS standards.

You can access the lesson plan here.

The future of this email list

We will continue to post data visualizations and information for events like significant earthquakes, which can be found on our website and social media accounts. With the transition of Teachable Moments, we’re adapting the use of this email list (which has been renamed to geophysic...@earthscope.org). Going forward, we will send a notification to this list for each new event we post, as soon as we post it.

If you would like to receive these notifications, you don’t need to do anything. If you would like to remove yourself from this list, you can simply send a blank message to geophysical-eve...@earthscope.org.

Connect with more resources

You can also consider joining our other education email lists if you haven’t already. Our monthly education newsletter highlights free teaching resources for Earth science education, particularly at the secondary level. And our Teaching Geophysics list is used to share new resources and opportunities for college-level instructors.

If you have any questions about these changes or any of our resources, reach out to communi...@earthscope.org and we’ll be happy to help!

Bluesky Facebook Linkedin Instagram Threads YouTube TikTok
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages