Teaching ecology at the college or pre-college level, many of us have used Stella, loop analysis, or depictions of the water cycle, nutrient cycles, and food webs to convey ecosystem process and function. By using conceptual models to teach about patterns in ecosystems, we are hoping our students can better understand the consequences of human activities on ecosystems. In addition, they may understand ecosystem complexity through modeling indirect effects between ecosystem components via feedback loops. Modeling is also a way for students to communicate and convey complex information in a symbolic language. Student-generated models can be used to help us understand what students know at different points in time about ecological concepts and interactions. We would like to meet with interested teachers and ecologists to talk about their experiences working with student-generated models and continue to share our collective experiences using conceptual or qualitative models in our teaching that began at the 2006 ESA Annual Meeting.