Check out the Climate Change Education Resource Guide for Schools produced by the team at the Center for Sustainability and Climate Education at the Dutchess County BOCES. Find ideas, resources and activities to start the conversation about our climate and the actions that we, our students and colleagues can take as global citizens.
Read MoreWe don’t know too many schools and districts that are teaching about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Sustainable Development Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked global goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all". The SDGs were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by the year 2030.
Read MoreLiving and Breathing Education for Sustainability - Sequoia Group Singapore EfS Podcast. In this podcast Jaimie discusses creating awareness, fostering commitment and guiding actions towards a healthy, secure and sustainable future.
Read More"... the other aspect in terms of educating for sustainability, is that, it just makes sense. As an educator, from seeing the impact it has on the authenticity of the student learning, but also, the impact is has on student engagement in society. Too often we expect kids to sit and receive, and not enough do we bring them in to the decision-making process. It's not fair to give them this world that has climate change and has all of these negative aspects going on around them, and to not give them the skills and the chance and the opportunity to make changes for a more sustainable future." - Chris Wyland on Place-Based Learning and Education for Sustainability
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Jaimie Cloud, of the Cloud Institute for Sustainable Education and Jenny Schinella of Dutchess BOCES join the Green Radio Hour with Jon Bowermaster to talk about just how important it is today to introduce 'sustainability' into every crevice of our education system. Click here to listen to the radio show
Read MoreThis is a great webinar that was hosted by the Center for Universal Education and Education International to discuss the path forward for education and climate action, and the recent Brookings policy brief “Unleashing the creativity of teachers and students to combat climate change: An opportunity for global leadership.”
Read MoreThanks to all of you who supported the upgrade of The Fish Game Online and to the team at Funatomic - educational game developers extraordinaire. The new Fish Game is now live! There are many new features to play with, including the ability to choose the number of fisher folk with whom you are fishing in each game; the ability to announce your intentions or not, and the ability to do or not do what you promised. You’ll see that everything you do and don’t do makes a difference. Let us know what you think!!!
Read MoreClient Spotlight
We are excited to announce The Cloud Institute’s new long term collaboration and partnership with the Sustainability Institute at Sequoia Group in Singapore. “We have been planning this for eleven years” said Jaqueline Wong, Executive Director of Sequoia Group and Co-Director of the Sustainability Institute, about our new work together. “The conditions are finally favorable in Singapore for this to happen.” The Singapore Green Plan 2030 has launched and takes Education and Schools seriously as leverage points for sustainability.
The EfS Reservoir is a multi-media repository of exemplars aligned to the EfS Benchmarks. The exemplars include quality curriculum units, courses, assessments, performance criteria, student work samples and eventually stories, interviews, discussions, images, narration and film that will illustrate the contexts and the impact of this work in schools and communities. Register for free to access the collection.
Read MoreLessons in Ocean Stewardship, Sustainability, and Responsible Consumer Habits
Washed Ashore Artwork features giant sea life sculptures made entirely of marine debris collected from beaches to graphically illustrate the tragedy of plastic pollution in our ocean and waterways.
Since 2010, thousands of volunteers have worked together with the non-profit organization Washed Ashore under the guidance of Founder and Artistic Director Angela Haseltine Pozzi to create these powerful art pieces.
Read MoreWhat do Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) and Educating for Sustainability (EfS) have to do with one another?
Where are the “twofers”—the power standards that are rich enough to do both? What does it look like to deliver instruction that honors DEI and also prepares students to participate in, and lead with us, the shift toward a sustainable future? In this webinar, we explored these and other questions about the intersection of EfS and DEI and discussed unit exemplars that honor both.
Jaimie recently spoke at the "Education for Resilient Cities with Climate Storyteller Partnership held by the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. She discussed some frameworks that will help to re-think the resilience of cities and its planning process. She also drew various links to education!
Twenty-five years of engaging educators and inspiring young people to think about the world, their relationship to it, and their ability to influence it in an entirely new way. In our opinion, there is nothing more important than learning and working together for the future we want. We believe that a healthy and sustainable future is possible.
Thank you to all who have participated in, and contributed to, this important work. Here’s to the next 25!
Read Morerepost from: greenschoolsnetwork.org By: Sanch Lawrence, Sep 29, 2020
I vividly remember my last in-person class before COVID-19 upended school as we know it. It was March 13, 2020, the day before Pi day.
I was teaching a lesson on simplifying a rational expression to my eleventh-grade Algebra 2 students at Clara Barton High School in New York City.
Students were casually discussing a Facebook post about COVID-19 as they worked in groups practicing problems in preparation for the upcoming Algebra 2 regents exam. Meanwhile, my coworkers and I were discussing the possibility of school being canceled for a few weeks or possibly the rest of the school year.
No one fully understood the health implications of COVID-19 and the impact it would have on in-person learning. And no one could’ve anticipated how the shift to remote learning would change the landscape of education, specifically how educational technology (ed-tech) would become essential to learning. Like water shapes itself to a vessel, educators had to transition from the traditional “chalk and talk” way of instruction to become smart-board, tech-savvy teachers. While challenging, this transition provided an opportunity for educators like myself to experiment with synchronous and asynchronous methods of teaching, as well as test out a host of ed-tech tools. For example, Zoom became a favorite among educators because of its breakout rooms, polling, and security features. Ed-tech tools quickly transformed the laptop screen into a classroom, where teachers, students, and parents could co-create a productive and collaborative online learning community.
I faced a couple of key challenges in transitioning my math classroom to a remote learning environment. My top priority was establishing a virtual classroom that accommodated multiple learning styles to ensure all my students had access to and could complete their assignments. Then came the challenge of covering what remained of the eleventh-grade math content for that year. I was personally challenged to find a way to deliver that content so it connected students to current events. The death of George Floyd, coupled with COVID-19, touched a nerve in students and stirred up strong feelings that needed to be expressed. Many of my students are aware of police violence in their neighborhoods and have experienced it themselves. How could I give my students an opportunity and an outlet to explore these issues while teaching math and meeting their multiple learning styles? The answer was project-based learning (PBL). PBL was a natural way to address these challenges; however, I had never used PBL in a virtual environment before.
I became a PBL Practitioner after attending hours of training offered by the New York City Department of Education’s Academic Integration Network and the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. I turned to these organizations again as I began to think more deeply about how I could facilitate authentic learning experiences in a virtual classroom that were personalized, interest-based, student-designed, and self-directed, all components of good PBL. Together, we designed interdisciplinary projects with themes that were designed to offer student choice. My class ultimately… [continued at: greenschoolsnationalnetwork.org/merging-math-and-project-based-learning-in-a-virtual-classroom]
John Henry and Jaimie P. Cloud discussed why short-term, unsustainable thinking during #COVID19 could lead to long-term unsustainable schools. Einstein once said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we used to create them”. Now, more than ever, is the time to think about #reopeningschools with the long term health of our school communities and every system and function of the school in mind. We know that sustainable actions create healthier schools at lower operational costs. Taking courageous steps now and solving problems by thinking differently, instead of taking actions driven by fear, could make a big difference in the health and well-being of our students and schools.
What to Preserve and What to Transform
Over time, life on Earth has experienced times of relative stability and has seen great disruptions like earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and global pandemics. Evolution, devolution, five near extinctions and yet some form of life has prevailed, so far. In fact, it is those very disruptions that make life possible on “Spaceship Earth”. Life organizes towards life. We can learn from both our social and physical history to invent our future as we build the capability to thrive over time. Appropriate disturbances create the next cycle of life. So how do we disrupt systemic racism, inequities and injustices?
Here you can find our Starter Unit Planner to respond to the unacceptable things people have been saying and doing in the U.S. because of racism, sexism and xenophobia.
Webinar: Moving Forward Together - What to Preserve & What to Transform
This special, single-day offering is designed to increase participants’ awareness, knowledge, and understanding of the core concepts, content, and habits of mind that characterize Sustainability and Education for Sustainability (EfS).
Cost: $149
In this curriculum design studio, we use backwards design, or Understanding by Design, to reorient, innovate, build, and map curricula designed to meet academic standards and EfS standards, performance indicators, and enduring understandings.
Cost: $495
NJSBA I-Steam and Sustainable Lessons John Henry and Jaimie P. Cloud will discuss why short-term, unsustainable thinking during COVID-19 could lead to long-term unsustainable schools. Einstein once said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we used to create them”. Now, more than ever, is the time to think about reopening schools with the long term health of our school communities and every system and function of the school in mind. We know that sustainable actions create healthier schools at lower operational costs. Taking courageous steps now and solving problems by thinking differently, instead of taking actions driven by fear, could make a big difference in the health and well-being of our students and schools.
The Cloud Commons EfS Digital Library houses Cloud Institute units and lessons, templates, assessment protocols, enduring workshop materials, videos, podcasts, and tools aligned to EfS Standards and Performance Indicators.
Purchase a 1 year pass and get access to all of our digital downloads, plus exclusive access to videos and podcasts by Jaimie Cloud.
Remote Leadership Consulting and Curriculum Coaching
Leadership Consulting: We provide consulting and leadership development to help administrators develop, implement and monitor a strategic plan for Education for Sustainability.
Curriculum Coaching: We offer faculty coaching for curriculum design to support the development of lesson plans and units that are mapped and documented in a curriculum database, aligned to EfS and Common Core Standards, and that include assessments that measure meaningful learning.
Employment Opportunity | Director of Youth Education Are you passionate about working towards a healthy planet that will sustain humans in harmony with the complex ecosystems we depend on? Do you like working with remote teams of impassioned individuals and partner organizations to achieve world-changing goals? Join the team! Apply by July 17, 2020
Dear Readers,
I started a unit plan to respond to the unacceptable things people have been saying and doing in the U.S. because of racism, sexism and xenophobia. I draw from the Enduring Understandings, Standards and Performance Indicators of Education for Sustainability. I completed Stage I and invite educators everywhere to build out Stages II and III as appropriate for your students, grade levels and disciplines.
We ask:
How can the new brain science help us to understand what is going on when people feel threatened by “the other”?
Throughout history, there are many examples of people who stood to gain economically and/or politically from creating and fueling conflict between diverse groups of people. Is the U.S. experiencing this phenomenon right now? Who stands to gain? Who stands to lose?
What good does diversity do us?
What do we need to know?
What kind of future do we want?
Please share your unit plans with us and with our larger community. This is a participatory design process and I look forward to seeing what you will build from this foundation.
Jaimie P. Cloud
The Other Literacies
Exploring environmental, social-emotional, and physical literacies. Reposted from: theotherliteracies.podbean.com
What perspectives are needed to weather our current social climate? What knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits of mind do we need to instill in young people to prepare them for tomorrow? How do successful leaders manage remote teams and achieve goals during times of change and uncertainty? What role will vision, imagination, and intention play in creating a future that is vibrant, resilient and thriving? We will explore these ideas and more in this free webinar series.
Read More
“I'm still feeling the powerful impact of the Green Schools Conference last week, I personally feel it was the most productive conference to date. There was a strong acknowledgement between all attendees that furthering the green schools movement is imperative in helping to address the climate crisis we’re in, and it’s only by working closely together with a unified commitment to the implementation of green, healthy, and sustainable practices that we’ll create access for all students to healthy, sustainable schools.”- Bridgitte Alomes, Natural Pod
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