Silverado Middle School teacher Patty Wyman remembers the day her world changed forever.

It was a perfect summer day, she said, in July 2006. Her daughter Samantha, then 18, was home after her first year of college, and the two were planning a girls’ day out. “Always environmentally conscious in our house,” said Wyman, Patty and Sam drove to Mill Valley to see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

After the movie, when they stepped from the dark, cool theater into the harsh sun, Wyman remembers her daughter asking her, “Mama, what are we going to do?”

“It was as if I was looking at my little girl as someone that needed to be protected against the monster in the closet,” said Wyman. “She’s all grown up, but it’s a mother’s duty to protect her children, for life.”

Wyman said she replied to her daughter, “I am going to do something. I am.”

And she did.

Wyman started looking on the Internet, trying to figure out how she could get involved in global warming education. Before long, Al Gore’s climate project contacted her and informed her that they were looking for speakers. After a long application process, Patty hopped a plane to Nashville in November 2006 to be one of the first 200 speakers trained by Gore on “An Inconvenient Truth” PowerPoint presentation.

The experience, she said, was “mind blowing.” When she and the other trainees arrived, they received a binder full of materials about global warming. The binder was made of recycled cardboard, she said.

Wyman laughs as she remembers looking at the list of other trainees. Experts in the field, activists and leaders swarmed the conference. “I check the names on the list and I am saying, ‘Patty Wyman, seventh-grade history teacher,’” she laughed.

Gore was “so passionate,” said Wyman. “It was a life-changing experience for me.”

There, she made a “commitment to learn as much as I could from (Gore) and to give speeches throughout my community. That was a year ago,” she said, “Nov. 22.”

Since then, Wyman has given 12 presentations, and “as long as people want me to speak, I will continue to speak.”

There are now about 1,000 speakers throughout the world trained in “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation, she said.

“It just takes one person,” said Wyman. “It doesn’t have to be big. Just one little thing makes a difference.” It can be “one kid at a time,” she said, “one group at a time, one speech at a time. … That will be their legacy.”

Wyman’s legacy, she said, is for her children. Samantha, 20, is studying communications and global peace and security at UC Santa Barbara. Maddy, 18, is a freshman at the Napa Valley College. “I want my children to know that I made a difference,” Wyman said, adding, “I want to save the world for my children. I want my children’s children to have a world like I knew it.”

Wyman said she is “one of the environmental advocates” at Silverado Middle School, where she has taught social studies for 15 years.

Her leadership class’ theme this year is “Go Big Green,” and students are raising money for the rain forest in the Del Oso Reserve in Costa Rica by selling T-shirts and collecting cans and plastic bottles. Her goal, she said, is “to save an hour worth of burning forest.”

She has also led campus efforts to provide additional recycling bins at Silverado, and she will be presenting at the California League of Middle Schools in February “as a springboard for other teachers to get involved.” In collaboration with Redwood Middle School teacher Sharon Campbell, Wyman worked with students to distribute plants and compact fluorescent light bulbs to fellow teachers.

“I have always been an optimist,” said Wyman, who said she was “involved in every activity” ever since she was a student at Napa High. Her first foray into community service, she said, was the March of Dimes Walk-a-thon when she was in eighth grade.

A lot has changed since then, she said. She’s a teacher in the town where she was once a student. Her college sweetheart, John Wyman, is now her husband of 23 years. Her oldest daughter Sam just finished her last final at UC Santa Barbara. The image of Mt. Fuji on her classroom wall, Wyman said, “will be obsolete in my lifetime.”

Still, she is an optimist at heart, and she is out to change the world, one group and one speech at a time. “I think I’ve always taken on each cause by making it personal,” she said. “I looked at each issue and made the decision to get involved knowing that every little bit would help. … I feel compelled to spread the word and set the example.”