Cookie Barker, a member of Third Act since January 2024, has gathered many honors as a devoted science educator, including being chosen in 1999 as the Outstanding Biology Teacher in New York State. An alumna of the Cornell Institute of Biology Teachers, she has taught science workshops at the regional, state, and national levels, was a New York State Master Teacher, a Woodrow Wilson fellow, a Science Teachers Association of New York State Service Award recipient— yet for all this recognition, her greatest love was teaching sciences to 7 – 12th grade children for 30 years in the Adirondack town of Schroon Lake.
Cookie Barker grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania, always outdoors, hunting, fishing – “just being,“ she says. “Since I started to walk, the environment was my life.” Her interest in science grew out of her love of nature, particularly how organisms interact with the natural world around them. Inevitably, biology became her passion. Her dream was to be a college professor with a focus on ecology. But after completing a Masters degree in zoology, she returned home to the family farm to escape the stress of graduate school. That fall she suffered a near fatal farm accident and after a long recovery, decided to leave farming and devote herself to teaching young people. She abandoned the PhD track, completed a teaching certificate, and began a life-long career teaching science to 7th – 12th grade students in a small public school in the Adirondacks.
Cookie fell in love with teaching almost instantly. “Every time I witnessed that magical moment of students moving to the edge of their seats with expressions of curiosity and questioning, fully engaged in science, I knew I was where I belonged.” Her love of teaching grew even deeper working in the intimate family atmosphere of the small North Country school where she drew close to the children and their parents. “Making the teaching even sweeter was the ease of working collaboratively with staff and having agency to explore creativity in what and how I taught,” she says. Her focus in all her courses was the environment and its interplay with evolution.
What shocked her was the opposition to critical, scientific thinking pervasive in America, especially in rural areas. Word of Life International, an organization advocating so-called “creation science,” was headquartered in her community. Year after year, Word of Life pressured her to include “creation science” in her classroom, which she always refused to do. Cookie had a gift for teaching children respectfully, but without bowing to pseudo-science. Her approach increasingly focused on the science behind the climate crisis, how and why the human use of fossil fuels is a threat to our planet.
Cookie’s commitment to science and how it’s taught continued after she retired: Cookie started a business in the professional development of science teachers, traveling to schools across New York state, helping science teachers develop and update their lesson plans. But when COVID struck, teaching science the way she believed necessary, in-person and hands-on, became impossible, and a new chapter began, living each day doing things she enjoyed – wood working, hiking, canoeing.
It soon became clear that there was more she had to give of herself. She started looking for a connection to her community with a science theme. “I knew just who to reach out to for ideas – Scott Ireland, our fellow North Country Third Actor. Scott had relocated to her area and she knew of his interest in the biology of NY state lakes. Scott recommended she join the Schroon Lake Association (SLA), and, of course, Third Act. Cookie also knew Bill McKibben – Bill and her husband are part of a small group who canoe and camp together, calling themselves with some amusement the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen.
Cookie joined the SLA as a board member, working to educate young people about Watershed Ecology. With Third Act, she is determined to help fight the war on science and disinformation so pervasive in rural areas. “Each day my main focus through Third Act becomes clearer to me” she says. Currently she is working with Third Act’s Uplift Democracy campaign to support Paula Collins in congressional District NY21 to defeat Elise Stefanik and Trump. “I consider Trump and Stefanik primary evils of democracy and science.” Having grown up in a rural township and after teaching science in one for 30 years, Cookie brings to the Collins campaign her understanding of people living in rural communities. As Third Act now gears up to focus on supporting climate friendly candidates in the coming election, Cookie says, “I’m realizing just how important my engagement can be to the future of our democracy.”
Cookie continues to live in the Adirondacks with her husband Mike Prescott, a retired high school principal and Adirondack historian. When she finds time to relax, she enjoys canoeing, hiking, and training her two Newfoundland dogs to participate in water rescue work and obedience and scent work trials.