Sustainability in Schools is Much More than “Going Green”

reposted from: https://www.youtube.com/user/njsba, Published Feb 13, 2015

When most people think of the word “sustainability”, it conjures up images of “going green” and environmental programming. Sustainable Jersey for Schools is a new program for New Jersey school districts where the possibilities of saving money, making schools healthier, and preparing students for future sustainable jobs are the goal. Please Join host Ray Pinney as he discusses this exciting program with Donna Drewes, Co-Director of the Sustainability Institute.

Is Your School or District Ready for Sustainable Jersey Certification? Learn how the Cloud Institute can help you earn points and effect change in your school community. /sjforschools

NYC DOE CTE | Cloud Partnership & EfS Programming

The Cloud Institute is proud to announce our new partnership with The NYC Department of Education's High School Career Technical Education (CTE) Office, Envirolution One, a leader in sustainability education and career development in NYC, green industry experts, and Rubicon Atlas, the Curriculum Mapping Software.
 
NYC High School Career and Tech Education has over 300 CTE programs in 120+ schools, serving more than 120,000 students annually. The goal of the CTE Sustainability Education Initiative,  is to educate for sustainability across all career pathways over the next several years.  In this first year, we will work with faculty from Automotive, Solar, Green Building, Electrical, and IT to develop, map and pilot exemplary units of study that meet the Cloud Institute's EfS Enduring Understandings, Standards and Performance Indicators, as well as industry standards appropriate to each career pathway. The exemplary units will be piloted during the 2015-16 school year. This program is one of the ways that educators and students in NYC can contribute to the goals of ONEnyc 2030, which encompasses The Mayor's Sustainability and Resiliency Initiatives.

Help the Green Bronx Machine build the National Health and Wellness Center at PS 55 in the South Bronx.

Help the Green Bronx Machine build the National Health and Wellness Center at PS 55 in the South Bronx.

The Green Bronx Machine (GBM) has just inherited a 60 x 25 foot empty library in a 100+ year old public school building as their future home, and they are working to turn it into the National Health and Wellness Center in the South Bronx, an innovative and engaging wonderland where students can increase their academic performance and can grow their way towards a brighter future. 

GBM believes that healthy students are at the heart of healthy schools, and healthy schools are at the heart of healthy communities.  By integrating plant-based teaching with core school curriculum, they will grow healthy food, healthy students and healthy academic performance. 

So just what is the National Health and Wellness Center?  It is a place of inquiry and wonder, inspiration and aspiration, a place full of tactile and experiential learning opportunities for students and teachers.  

To make all of this possible, they will have the following four components:

  • Indoor Teaching Farm - we will teach students hands-on about food from seed to harvest, and will connect lessons to classroom curriculum.
  • Teaching Kitchen - we will teach students how to prepare and cook the vegetables they have just grown to create delicious, healthy meals.
  • Media and Resource Center - students will have access to computers for data recording and analysis, and internet for research and inter-classroom lessons with other schools across the country and internationally.
  • Indoor Community Farm - we will grow enough food to send 100 students per week home with bags of fresh vegetables, 52 weeks per year.

Educator and GBM CEO Stephen Ritz says, “It is easier raise healthy children, than fix broken men." With his work, he is simultaneously changing the way kids eat and learn.  Here is what the National Health and Wellness Center will allow him to accomplish within Public School 55:

  • Increased student engagement - He wants students to show up to school excited and ready to learn.  We want them to enjoy learning and develop a hunger for knowledge.  He will nourish their bodies and their minds.
  • Improved academic performance and test scores - as students experiment hands-on, they learn, and as they learn, they perform better!  He wants all of his 4th grade students to pass the New York State 4th Grade Science Exam this year, and he wants to send the first group of PS 55 students to the Bronx High School of Science.
  • Healthier students - as students understand where food comes from and how it grows, they will make better, healthier food choices.  Steve and GBM will provide ongoing, reliable access to healthy food right in school all year long.

GBM’s focus now is to embed their work into the entire culture of PS 55.  They know they can do this because they have generated incredible results in other schools, including: 

  • Targeted daily attendance rates increased from 40% to 93%
  • 100% graduation rate among participating students
  • 100% passing rate on NY State Regents Exam

Please support Steve Ritz and the Green Bronx Machine’s National Health and Wellness Center at Public School 55 in the South Bronx.  Find out how you can contribute at https://www.barnraiser.us/projects/the-green-bronx-machine-can.  

100% of the tax-deductible funds raised in this campaign will be used toward the purchase of equipment, facility upgrades, content creation, and operations in order to set this vision into motion. 

The Cloud Institute | Schools Learn EfS

The Cloud Institute's work with schools revolves around curriculum, instruction and assessment for Education for Sustainability (EfS). EfS is defined as a transformative learning process that equips students, teachers, and school systems with the new knowledge and ways of thinking required to achieve economic prosperity and responsible citizenship while restoring the health of our living systems.

Education for Sustainability has multiple, positive effects on student achievement, school culture, community vitality, and ecological integrity. Young people experience a greater awareness of community and a greater appreciation of the democratic process, and teachers respond confidently and with an improved outlook. EfS contributes to improved relationships between the schools, parents and the community, and neighborhoods benefit from improved air quality, reduced waste, and decreased energy use.

Our Schools Learn program is a long-term and comprehensive approach to developing whole school capacity to educate for sustainability. We support efforts to embed EfS into curriculum, instruction and assessment, and organizational learning practices, while working in partnership with the community. Schools Learn programming will generally include: Introduction to Education for Sustainability, Administrative Planning and Coaching, Professional Development and Curriculum Coaching for Instructors and Formal Strength Assessments.

How can Education for Sustainability (EfS) increase student health and academic achievement? How can EfS help to retain the best and brightest young teachers? How can EfS stimulate and sustain school and community improvement? These are just a few of the questions that we will answer together.

Learn more and schedule a consultation or workshop HERE.

View our client list HERE.

 

Edgemont Montessori Elementary School Awarded Eco-Schools USA Bronze Award

Repost from: http://baristanet.com/2015/02/edgemont-montessori-elementary-school-awarded-eco-schools-usa-bronze-award
Original Post Date: February 2015

Students, staff, and parents at the Edgemont Montessori School in Montclair are playing their part in reducing waste pollution, protecting trees, and producing less toxic chemical emissions. The school was recently awarded the Bronze Award by the National Wildlife Federation’s Eco-Schools USA Program. This international program recognizes and provides free resources to schools integrating sustainability into the curriculum and on school grounds. Through the Eco-Schools program, schools select from 10 environmental focus areas or pathways to work on such as energy efficiency, biodiversity, and sustainable foods. This free and voluntary program has been gaining popularity in the Garden State with 122 schools registered throughout New Jersey.

Edgemont Principal Cheryl Hopper says “This award reinforces Edgemont’s commitment to not just teaching our students about the environment and its sustainability, but also living out those lessons in the children’s time both in and outside school. It is testament to our staff, students, and families, all of who have created inside Edgemont a culture of awareness and compassion for the broader world.”

To win the Bronze Award schools must establish an “Eco-Action Team”, conduct an environmental audit, develop and monitor an Eco-Action plan and include the community. Edgemont did just that with students having fun along the way. Starting in the fall of 2013 and continued again in the fall of 2014 the school began work on Eco-School’s consumption and waste pathway, kicking off their program with school-wide education and Recycling Right Challenge contest. The winning classes were invited to zero-waste parties and other prizes were awarded.

“We are excited by what this means for the school and the environment and the students’ sense of environmental stewardship. “says Gloria Lepari, Eco-Action Team Co-Chair and teacher. Suzanne Aptman, Eco-Action Co-Chair and parent explains “It was powerful to see the school come together with such focus and enthusiasm. We have a new waste-reducing program in place. We hope to continually improve it year after year while working on other environmental focus areas.”

Edgemont’s efforts resulted in an increase in classroom recycling rates and reduced cafeteria trash from 3 bins per day on average to 2 bins per day on average. That translates to roughly 20 bins of trash per month that is diverted from the Newark Incinerator and is no longer an additional source of pollution. Edgemont students took special care with plastic bottle caps which create an additional challenge to wildlife in our waterways who mistake plastic pieces for food. Students collected close to 1,000 caps between January and September and have plans to upcycle those caps.

“The Edgemont Montessori School community should be proud of what they have accomplished with the Eco-Schools USA program in such a short period of time. Students can see the impact that they are making with their efforts and that makes the learning so much more meaningful.” says Jennifer Dowd, Eco-Schools NJ Coordinator, New Jersey Audubon.

Edgemont has also started to incorporate waste-free procedures into the school events, especially their big annual fundraiser “Green Eggs and Ham”. About 150 gallons of non-recycled trash was delivered, by committed parents, to a local commercial composting facility after the event.

The school looks forward to setting new goals around waste reduction while focusing on additional Eco-School pathways. Edgemont is also certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat with National Wildlife Federation and just this year was recognized as a Monarch Butterfly Way Station for a newly established butterfly garden and efforts to educate the students around pollinator protection.

There are nine other Eco-Schools in Essex County including Miller Street Elementary School, East Side High School, Greater Newark Charter School, H.B. Whitehorne Middle School, Maria L. Varisco Rogers Charter School, Millburn Middle School, Montclair Kimberly Academy, Philips Academy Charter School, and Watchung School.

Useful Steps to Embedding EfS Standards into your Core Curriculum using Backwards Design (UbD)

By Jaimie P. Cloud

 

For those of you who understand what EfS is, who can articulate why you should do it, who are inspired and clear about the role that education plays in accelerating the shift toward sustainability… and just need some guidance on HOW to embed EfS into your core curriculum, this is for you. If you don’t yet have the tools and vocabulary you need to make sense of this, you can participate in one of our introductory professional development programs and receive follow up coaching services. Or take advantage of our “do it yourself” resources in our bookstore. The Fish Game and The EfS Curriculum Design Manual will get you started.

VOCABULARY

  • EfS Standards - The knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits of mind of Education for Sustainability (EfS) are embedded in The Cloud Institute's EfS Standards and Performance Indicators. Aligned to Common Core, Next Generation Science and other and State educational standards, each EfS Standard has a set of coded Performance Indicators used to guide educators as they infuse their curriculum, instruction and assessment practices with Education for Sustainability. We believe that by meeting these EfS standards, young people will be prepared to participate in, and to lead with us, the shift toward a sustainable future. The Cloud Institute's EfS Standards and Performance Indicators are available on the Rubicon Atlas Curriculum Mapping system. Contact us if your school is using Atlas and would like access.

  • Backwards Design/Understanding by Design (UbD) - Understanding by Design® (UbD™) is a framework for improving student achievement. Emphasizing the teacher's critical role as a designer of student learning, UbD™ works within the standards-driven curriculum to help teachers clarify learning goals, devise revealing assessments of student understanding, and craft effective and engaging learning activities. UbD was developed by nationally recognized educators Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, and published by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). “Backwards Design” is a term we use to describe the process of designing curriculum with the end (the desired learning outcomes) in mind.

  • Levels of Accomplishment
    Introductory: Students are assessed at an introductory/basic level of accomplishment
    Progressing: Students are assessed based on their ability to demonstrate progress toward accomplishment
    Mastery: Students are assessed for mastery of the content or skill being addressed

  • Curriculum Stages - In UbD and Backwards Design, there are three stages to the design process. The first two stages make up the curriculum.
    Stage 1
    - Learning Outcomes (rationale, transfer goals, standards, enduring understandings, content knowledge, skills, /Essential Question(s).
    Stage 2
    - Assessments and Explicit Performance Criteria

  • Instruction Stage - In UbD and Backwards Design, the third stage is made up of the instructional practices that deliver on the curriculum.
    Stage 3
    - Lessons, Activities, Learning Experiences

PRE-REQUISITE STEPS

A.   Acquire a shared understanding of sustainability and Education for Sustainability in your school community; develop personal rationales for educating for sustainability; become informed, inspired and hopeful about the role that education can play in making the shift toward a sustainable future

B.     Align the EfS Enduring Understandings, Standards and Performance Indicators to your core curriculum. 
(This activity is in the EfS Curriculum Design Manual in the bookstore. You can also receive the protocol with the EfS Alignment Charts available in the bookstore.) 

C.     Select a unit of study you want to “sustainablize” or design from scratch. Make note of how much time you have to deliver the unit. (Time is our only currency.)

CURRICULUM STAGE 1 - LEARNING OUTCOMES/ESSENTIAL QUESTION(S) 

D.     Select the required standards (Common Core, NGSS, Content, etc.) that this unit will address.

E.     Select the EfS Enduring Understanding(s), and the EfS Standards and Performance Indicators that are aligned to this unit, and that this unit will address.

F.     Decide what Essential Question(s) will drive the unit. Make sure that the Essential Question(s) corresponds to the Enduring Understandings you have selected. You may want to write a rationale for this unit (sooner or later it is good practice to do so) and you may want to develop a transfer goal(s) for the unit so that you keep in mind right from the beginning what, in the long run, you want students to be able to do independently and in a novel context as a result of this unit. It is a humbling experience to develop transfer goals. I recommend it.

G.     Using your UBD/Backwards Design Unit Overview Template, “Un-Pack” the Standards and Indicators (all) by dissecting each performance indicator and breaking it down into concrete understandable content knowledge (nouns) and skills (verbs) in those sections of your template. (Standards and Indicators are always written in abstract language—and this is an excellent step for meaning making and translation into practical language.) A good unit overview template is laid out so that the content section and the skills section sit side by side so you can see them together. This is really useful—because it is these two boxes you will work with most when it comes time to sketch lessons.

H.     Sequence, color code, and group the content knowledge in the order in which it will be delivered and do the same with the corresponding skills that will demonstrate that students have learned the content. Here is one exemplar of a Kindergarten Unit entitled, Change: Smile Through It! written by Jaimie Cloud and Marie Alcock. CLICK HERE

I.     Once you have the content and skills the way you want them—you can sketch the sequence of guiding questions you will ask that corresponds to the content and skills. Do a quick check to make sure that the content, skills and guiding questions you are sketching are all congruent with one another and serve your Enduring Understanding(s) and Essential Question(s).

J.     During the design process, I like to write the guiding questions in the content section first—so that I make sure that I haven’t missed anything. Sometimes I leave a copy there as a reference and then I always copy and paste the guiding questions into the learning opportunities/lessons section (Stage 3) because they will eventually drive the lessons and activities that will deliver on everything in Stage 1.

CURRICULUM STAGE 2 - ASSESSMENTS AND EXPLICIT PERFORMANCE CRITERIA

K.     Look back at the Outcomes you selected and indicate the level of performance for each one you will assess (Introductory, Progressing or Mastery (IPM), and/or, The Depths of Knowledge (DOK). Decide what assessments will provide evidence of student learning, when they will need to be administered, what level(s) of accomplishment you are assessing for, and what quality performance criteria (rubrics, checklists, exemplars…) you will use explicitly with your students—and how and when you will need to communicate it to them.

INSTRUCTION STAGE 3 - LESSONS, ACTIVITIES, LEARNING EXPERIENCES

L.     All along stages 1 and 2 you have been thinking about activities, readings and resources you will use with your students. Whenever your mind goes there, just jot them down in the Stage 3 Box. Don’t spend too much time in Stage 3 while you are still working out Stages 1 and 2, but don’t lose a good idea you will use in Stage 3 because you aren’t there yet. This is an iterative process—not a linear one. At the end of the day you want to make sure that all three stages hang together in a whole system of congruent mutually beneficial parts.

M.     Now it’s time to really dive into the specifics of your lesson planning—the timing, the flow of activities and assessments, the handouts you will need, the scheduling and logistics of the projects and place based learning opportunities, etc. Much of the heavy lifting has been done by this time and if your content, skills and guiding questions are robust and clear to you, and you have been checking to make sure it all serves the Essential Question(s) and ultimately the Enduring Understanding(s) and the standards and benchmarks, then through the lessons you sketch you should get exactly what you designed for: Students who are engaged mindful and reflective, whose products and performances demonstrate that they have met the standards at the appropriate level, and who are prepared to participate in, and to lead with us, the shift toward a sustainable future.

TNT's Dramatic Difference Features Green Bronx Machine

Repost from: http://www.tntdrama.com/video/?oid=679812
Original Post Date: January 2014

Educator and Green Bronx Machine Founder, Stephen Ritz and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz discuss urban farming, sustainable education and opportunities for youth in the Bronx.

Learn more at http://greenbronxmachine.org

Mobile Edible Wall Units: Growing Healthy Food and Minds

Repost from: http://www.njfarmtoschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/2014-01NJF2S_News-03.html

Original Post Date: January 2014

What do you get when you put an inspiring technology into the hands of high school students? You get real life applications of 21st Century Skills which can be translated into job skills in industries related to agriculture and the sciences.

The Mobile Edible Wall Unit, better known as a "MEWU", which is pronounced "mee woo", is the invention of Green Living Technologies, a Rochester, New York-based company founded by New Jersey native, George Irwin. These walls are increasingly being used in schools for indoor school gardens, in school greenhouses and are broadening the biology and science related learning taking place in high schools that have them.

We first heard about MEWUs from teacher Steve Ritz, who was the keynote speaker at the Green Schools Alliance Conference in New York a few years back. Steve was using the walls in his classroom at the time at Discovery High School in the Bronx. His students were keenly interested in the hands-on applications the walls provided and were seeing first hand what the technological applications were for growing plants and food. Fast forward to 2014 and some of these same students continue to be hired to work on professional job sites, using the skills they gained while incorporating Green Living Technologies' educational programs into their day to day class instruction.

Here in New Jersey, the first school to purchase a MEWU was Monroe Township High School, where Nancy Mitrocsak, the food service director for the district, learned about the walls through the New Jersey Farm to School Network and went on a mission to find funding to bring them to the high school. With the support of District Supervisor of Sciences and Social Studies, Bonnie Burke-Casaletto, the school incorporated the walls into their expanded greenhouse program and teacher Christian Jessop and his students have been using them ever since. In a recent email exchange, the team updated us on their progress, "As a quick and exciting update-we're collaborating with Helen in our Food Service department to harvest a complete wall of basil! It looks and smells wonderful and Mr. Jessop has done much under tough weather conditions during our holiday break to keep our student-created growth projects thriving on-site. Things are green and flourishing."

Meanwhile, at South Hunterdon High School in Tiffany Morey's Floral Design Class, FFA (Future Farmers of America) student Mitchell Haug contributed the following report about the use of a MEWU with fellow students Charles McDaniel, Patrick Charles, Collin Leary, and Isaiah Jones.

"Ever since we unloaded the Green Wall that was loaned to us by New Jersey Farm To School on December 6th and set it up in our Ag Shop, it's been nothing but good times. From packing the boxes with soil to seeding, watering, and overcoming a few engineering challenges, the Wall has provided us with a challenging yet rewarding learning experience.

As the five guys in the floral design class, we weren't always as excited when it came to putting together centerpieces or assembling corsages and boutonnieres, but we did all share a passion for agriculture. When our advisor came to us with the offer that we could use class time to grow and take care of plants in an innovative way, we were thrilled. It wasn't long before we were putting together the wall and loading it up with soil.

Since then we have seen promising results. While there were some early issues with a water recycling system and soil erosion, these issues have since been resolved and we have begun to see germination and the beginnings of life. We currently have six varieties of lettuce planted that we plan to use in the school's cafeteria and culinary classes. We look forward to continuing with the wall and seeing what we can produce!"

To learn more about the Mobile Edible Wall Unit, click here. Green Living Technologies and the New Jersey Farm to School Network are collaborating on a program to bring more MEWUs into New Jersey schools. If your school or district is interested in learning more, please email us at info@njfarmtoschool.org and put MEWU in the subject line.

The Blue School in The News

Blue School Feature on CNN Next List - March 2012

Champions for education for sustainability, creativity and a community of learning, The Blue School makes CNN's The Next List.

 

Making Education Brain Science - April 2012

LAST month, two kindergarten classes at the Blue School were hard at work doing what many kindergartners do: drawing. One group pursued a variation on the self-portrait. “That’s me thinking about my brain,” one 5-year-old-girl said of her picture. Down the hall, children with oil pastels in hand were illustrating their emotions, mapping where they started and where they ended. For one girl, sadness ended at home with a yummy drink and her teddy bear. MORE

Photo Credit: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times. Written By

 

How our Teaching Changes our Thinking, and How our Thinking Changes the World

Repost from: http://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/content/how-our-teaching-changes-our-thinking-and-how-our-thinking-changes-the-world-a-conversation-with-jaimie-cloud_2011_05/
Original Post Date: May 8th, 2011

How our Teaching Changes our Thinking, and How our Thinking Changes the World: A Conversation with Jaimie Cloud

By Pramod Parajuli and Rosemary Logan

(Guest Editor’s Note: Jaimie Cloud, the Founder and President of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability, is one of the sustainability education thinkers and practitioners we chose to interview and profile in this issue of JSE. The conversation below took place during December 2010 and January 2011 between Jaimie, Pramod and Rosemary.  After the draft version of this conversation was prepared, Jaimie filled in with additional contents and illustrations. A systems thinker and a thought leader in Education for Sustainability (EfS), Jaimie concludes this conversation with five-fold working principles. First, live by the natural laws. Second, read the feedback. Third, a healthy and sustainable future is possible, we just have to educate for it.  Fourth, it all begins with a change in thinking. And, finally, we are all responsible. Jaimie also points out that only 29% of her EfS clients are attracted to this area due to their concern with the environment. This is eye opening and demands our attention to other dimensions of learning and seeking sustainability. Perhaps they are social, cultural, economic, political, ethical and moral. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Through the pages of JSE, you are also invited to expand and enrich what we have started.

Pramod Parajuli, Ph.D.)

1. Rosemary and Pramod:

Jaimie, you are recognized as one of the thought leaders of the Education for Sustainability (EfS) concept and movement.  Will you tell us about your background?  Who are you and what led you to found the Cloud Institute? What is the work that you do, with whom, and how did your organization come to be?

Jaimie: I was in one of the first experiments in global education from the 6th-12th grades.  As a result, my work began at the age of 11.  I grew up in Evanston, Illinois.  Our teachers were influenced by Buckminster Fuller and other luminaries of the time. The gist of the experiment was to prepare us to thrive in the 21st Century, to become agents of change and inventors of the future we want.  They provided us  with learner-centered, constructivist methodologies  that produced reflective, flexible and creative questioners, systems thinkers, lateral thinkers, media literate, self-regulated learners prepared to deal with rapid change, increasing complexity and interdependence, uncertainty, diversity, and global challenges, including the environment, peace and security, human rights and human development.

In middle school, I could not have predicted that I would be a founder of the field of Education for Sustainability.  The term sustainability and sustainable development, as we understand it today, would not be coined until 1987, nineteen years later, and the field of Education for Sustainability would not be born until 1992 in Chapter 36 of Agenda 21—some 24 years later.

I grew up to become a Global Educator because that’s what I knew.  In 1987, when the word sustainability appeared in a U.N. report, Our Common Future, I thought to myself, “That’s the name for the desired condition I want to educate for.” I had been tracking the state of the planet data since 1968—since I was 11.  Now I had a word to describe what I saw:  The situation was un-sustainable for humans and other species of plants and animals with whom we share the planet.  Sustainable seemed like a better idea.  Once I had the word, I had the concept. Once I had the concept, I knew I needed to educate for sustainability. My first questions were: What is sustainability?  How do you measure it? What knowledge, skills and attitudes will be required to make the shift toward a sustainable future?  How will we educate for the sustainable future we want? Am I already doing “it” as a global educator? How will it change what I’m doing now? Who is being attracted to this work? Are they smart, creative whole systems thinkers? Can they dance?

I founded the Sustainability Education Center in 1995 at The American Forum for Global Education.  I felt like a laggard.  It had been three years since Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 was written.  In 2002, we officially spun off and became a 501-C3, and we were eventually re-branded by Heller Communications as The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education.  As thought leaders involved in the development of the field of Education for Sustainability (EfS), we work to define the field of EfS through our framework, our EfS standards and performance indicators, enduring understandings, and the articulation of all the fields that inform EfS and the other frameworks and standards with which we are aligned.  Our mission is to ensure the viability of sustainable communities by leveraging changes in K-12 school systems to prepare young people for the shift toward a sustainable future.

  • We monitor the evolving thinking and skills of the most important champions of sustainability and transform them into educational materials and a pedagogical system that inspires young people to think about the world, their relationship to it, and their ability to influence it in an entirely new way.
  • We believe that K-12 education can substantially influence beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors related to sustainability. This is the most fertile ground for helping to shape a society committed to sustainable development.
  • We develop in young people and their teachers the new knowledge and ways of thinking needed to achieve economic prosperity and responsible citizenship while restoring the health of the living systems upon which our lives depend.

That is my story. Please also visit our blog at: /blog/category/resources

2. Rosemary: Though EfS is a relatively new term, the concept is not. Could you, for example, describe some of the precursors to EfS? What fields most strongly contribute to EfS? What, for example is the relationship between EFS and environmental or ecological education? Has environmental education played a role in the identity formation of EfS?

Jaimie: Precursors to EfS are global education, future studies, environmental education, wholistic education, diversity education, win/win conflict resolution, systems thinking and system dynamics education, to name a few. From my perspective, there is no one field that dominates EfS in the U.S.  Each country is different in this regard. In the U.S., the field grew because a handful of people from a lot of different fields emerged simultaneously, independently and co-constructively. The momentum to grow the field is much greater internationally than it has been in the U.S.  My colleagues globally are in Ministries of Education and Colleges of Education.  Here, we are a few NGOs holding the space for the development of the field, and a very few colleges of education have taken the lead.  Prescott College is one of the few.

The fields that strongly contribute to EfS are:

  • Sciences

–        Environmental Science and Education

–        Science Education (Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Earth Science…)

–        Neuroscience

–        Quantum Physics

  • Economics

–        Sustainable Economics

  • Social Sciences

–        Global Education

–        Ecological Design and Architecture Education

–        Holistic Education

–        Future Studies

–         Arts and Humanities (Literature, History, Performing, Visual…)

–        Organizational Learning and Change

–        Environmental Ethics and Philosophy

–        Ecological Psychology

–        Positive Psychology

–        Science of Happiness

–        Conflict Resolution Education

–        Systems Thinking and System Dynamics Education

–        Game Theory

The field of neuroscience and the new research on the brain has been extremely useful in contributing to our ability to teach and learn about the paradigms, frames, or mental maps that drive people’s behavior.  Thinking drives behavior, and behavior causes results.  If you don’t like the results, the most upstream place to intervene is the thinking.  That is why education of a certain kind (Orr) is key to making the shift toward sustainability and regeneration. Piaget explained the difference between assimilation and accommodation. So much of our current reality is a result of old ways of thinking and a gap between old mental models and current reality. Our job is to close the gap between mental models and the reality itself based on the evidence—based on the data. That is why Neuroscience is included on The Cloud Institute’s list of fields that contribute to EfS.

Understanding the relationship between EfS and environmental education is interesting because it is not as simple as you might think. From a conceptual point of view they are, in many ways, aligned and complimentary.  Certainly, we are all interested in contributing to a sustainable future through education.  What is in a name? This is where things get tricky.  People call what they are doing whatever they want to call it—whatever there is funding for, or whatever they are used to calling it.  The only way to know whether a program is EE or EfS is to study the attributes, the competencies, and the measureable outcomes.

If one is doing outdoor education and kids are connecting to nature and falling in love with nature by studying science and biology or ecology and ecosystems, then some people would call that environmental education, place-based education, Environment as an Integrating Context (EIC), environmental science, and/or outdoor education. EE has a robust set of standards that are well respected and do an excellent job of capturing what EE is and does. The Cloud Institute’s EfS Content Standards for Education for Sustainability include Responsible Local and Global Citizenship, Sustainable Economics, the Dynamics of Systems and Change, Healthy Commons, Multiple Perspectives, the Natural Laws and Ecological Principles, Inventing and Affecting the Future, Sense of Place, and Cultural Preservation and Transformation. Embedded in the content standards are twelve enduring understandings, five distinct thinking skill sets, six core attitudes and a host of best instructional practices.  It is quite easy to see the similarities and differences between EE and EfS if you look carefully at the core content and learning outcomes we have each articulated.  Everyone wants to be the umbrella and no one wants to be under it.   So there is no sense in trying to determine which one is the “umbrella” field.

The purpose of Education for Sustainability, from our perspective, is to contribute to our individual and collective potential and that of the living systems upon which our lives depend.  We have to learn how to be well in our places without undermining their ability to sustain us over time. Even better is to learn how to develop a regenerative relationship with the living systems upon which our lives depend.  The foundations of our knowledge, skills, and habits of mind are cultivated in our schools.  All the children and young people are legally required to go to school.  That is why we work in schools.

3. Pramod: Has David Orr’s work, his 15 principles we need to know for example, informed your work?

Jaimie: Absolutely. We have embedded his thinking, and that list informs our standards and performance indicators. They fit most appropriately in our core content standard, Natural Laws and Ecological Principles. We have integrated David’s list as well as several other people’s, including Janine Benyus’s work in the principles of Biomimicry, and Sim Van der Ryn’s Principles of Ecological Design, along with several other authors who have tried to capture the essence of what we need to know about the “operating instructions” for the planet. All of David Orr’s books are required reading. He has had a huge influence on my work. He was also one of the first people to make the case for the role of education in contributing to sustainability.  “The worth of education must now be measured against the standards of decency and human survival—the issues now looming so large before us in the 21st century. It is not education, but education of a certain kind, that will save us” (Orr). Too few have said this out loud or have published on the topic.

In most serious conversations about sustainability, I have not detected a shared understanding of the role of education, particularly K-12, in contributing to the shift toward a sustainable future. I have spoken to system dynamics modelers who assume that the time horizon for the return on an investment in Education for Sustainability is twenty years. When I hear that, I ask them, “Do you know any children?!” In my experience, it takes children and young people very little time (especially compared to adults) to turn what they’ve learned into action at the local level.  On average, they are much more responsive, creative, and quicker to make change than we adults are. A seriously flawed assumption is at work there. To quote David Orr again, “This current situation we find ourselves in is not the work of ignorant people. On the contrary, it is the work of extremely well educated people—with advanced degrees.”

In David’s book, Earth in Mind, an entire chapter is devoted to the question, “What is education for?” In the service of what?  We begin many conversations about EfS by asking the following questions that are classic to our field:

What kind of future do we want? What do we want to sustain? For whom, for how long, and what does education have to do with it?  The very next question begged has to be, “What is education for?

4.Pramod: As of now, there are some 400 plus definitions of sustainability.  Is there a particular definition of sustainability (or a mix) that you prefer? What are foundational concepts of sustainability that you and the Cloud Institute are comfortable with?

Jaimie: Yes…there is one that I love. The one I love is from Donella Meadows, “A sustainable society is one that is far-seeing enough, flexible enough, and wise enough not to undermine either its physical or its social systems of support.” I also love and use Mathis Wackernagel’s definition a lot too.  He says that sustainability means “a quality of life for all within the means of nature.” That’s a nice, short, and elegant one. We collect definitions of sustainability because people always ask us for one. Having said that, defining it is not actually going to be enough if you really want people to understand what the “it” is.  I often get calls for advice from people who are learning how to educate for sustainability.  They will often call after the fact when they feel that they have flopped. My first question is always, “Tell me you didn’t define education for sustainability in your opening line.” That was their first and last mistake.  In my experience, defining sustainability is like defining education, or grace, or democracy or excellence.  It is not the definition that captures the essence. It is the essence itself, and you just have to learn what it is and experience it to get it.  Defining sustainability makes people’s eyes glaze over…it doesn’t help people get it. Yet, definitions are required.  That is why we collect them.  When people ask me for my “elevator speech,” I often recommend we take the stairs…

Sustainable solutions solve more than one problem at a time and minimize the creation of new problems (Wendell Berry). They contribute to the health of the very systems upon which they depend. Think about the word Sustain-ABLE- what makes something sustain-able? What makes human life on Earth sustain-able? Mutually beneficial relationships with all of the living systems upon which we depend. It’s real simple. It’s not sustain-GUARANTEED. Death and taxes are still the only two guarantees. I do not see evidence of a shared understanding among a critical mass of human beings on Earth about what it takes to sustain us as a species over time. We have created incredibly unfavorable conditions for humans to survive (let alone thrive), as well as for all the creatures with which we are interdependent to survive and thrive over time.  Unintentionally, to be sure, but the feedback is the feedback.

5. Pramod: Among others, your work with the K-12 school teachers seems to be very prominent and rigorous.  I call it the “one teacher at a time” approach to deepening sustainability.  What is your experience in working with teachers?  Do you have some success stories (or lack thereof) to share?

Jaimie: Actually, we work with “one system at a time.” One teacher at a time would take too long. The most whole system work we do is with school districts and their communities learning together for a sustainable future.  We call those our Sites Learn initiatives. Examples include the nine sites around the country that are members of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Education Partnership that Peter Senge and I created with a team of colleagues, and also our New Jersey Learns program which is funded by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and is made up of a growing number of sites around New Jersey that participate in Sustainable Jersey. The next level on the continuum is our Districts Learn work. We work with individual districts and consortia of districts to Educate for Sustainability. The best example of that is our work with seventeen districts through the Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES on a massive and multifaceted EfS initiative that is grounded in a core set of web-based exemplary units of study across all grade levels and disciplines (www.pnwboces.org/efs). Next, we work with individual schools (Schools Learn) from PS 208 in Harlem to the Denver Green School, and from Trevor Day School in NYC to Marin Country Day School in Corte Madera, California, to name a few.  We need to have models and exemplars of what EfS looks like in a school, a district, and a community. If you go to our website you can see our approach and all our programs described there. We network all with whom we work so we can scale up the quantity and quality of the work as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Having said all of that, indeed a big part of the work we do involves professional development and coaching of teachers, leadership development and organizational learning consulting and planning with administrators, and work with educators to embed EfS into the core curriculum. Most K-12 schools are new to EfS. A small minority have been working on it since the early 1990s.

We usually begin a relationship with a school or district by providing an introduction to sustainability and education for sustainability in order to achieve three outcomes: 1) A shared understanding among the stakeholders of sustainability and EfS; 2) A personal rationale for educating for sustainability, and; 3) Participants will become inspired and hopeful about contributing to sustainability through education. If we are able to spend one day with educators—even just a day—as crazy as education is these days with testing, budget cuts, and graduation rates at an all time low, at the end of that day, the overwhelming response from teachers and administrators is, “Yes, this is important. I will do what I can to educate for sustainability.  It’s our responsibility. Kids need and deserve this kind of education.  Yes, I will do this.” Maybe they are an “early adopter” and they are ready to start “sustainablizing” (a short hand word we made up) their curriculum and instructional practices, or maybe they’re not quite ready for that yet, and they go home and pow-wow with their families to start being more conscious about their food buying habits or their waste production. Whatever they are ready for, I can say with all honesty that I have never met an educator that said, “Nah…I think I’ll keep educating for unsustainability. I don’t really like kids all that much anyway. I don’t care about their future.” Never once.  All the educators that I have ever met without exception want what is good for kids. It is a deep and fundamental aspiration to contribute to the health and well-being of our children and of future generations. They remember why they became educators in the first place…and the creativity and the work begins. Sustainability and EfS are what’s better for the kids. This is goosebump material!  The work of educating for sustainability is extremely exciting, energizing, and fun.  It is a lot of work—especially in the beginning—and it is worth it.  Our children are worth it.

Let me provide some examples of what it looks like to work with a teacher in a school to embed EfS into the curriculum:

Example ONE:  This is a story from one of our partner schools, St. Paul’s School in New Orleans. They use the Cultural Literacy Curriculum developed by E.D. Hirsch.  One of the teachers we work with was teaching a course on the human body and trying to figure out how to incorporate EfS into the learning. What people don’t always realize is that educating for sustainability is not always about sustainability. It is first and foremost about developing the knowledge and the ways of thinking that will help us to thrive over time—systems thinking is a good example. We want to develop as systems thinkers and to be able to transfer those habits of mind where and when appropriate. The human body is a great thing to study to understand systems and interdependence and the system’s archetypes. You can chart behavior over time…study interdependence by understanding how one part of the system affects the other parts… and all of this can be studied through the human body.  As soon as the teacher saw the connection—saw that systems thinking could contribute to her students’ understanding of the human body (and contribute to sustaining human life on the planet…)—it was a win-win-win. She fell in love with the idea and off she went. It is a great unit of study.

Example TWO: An example of the results of EfS on students is the work of a science teacher at Marin County Day School in California, which is another one of our partner schools. This science teacher was interested in having her students study indigenous plants on the mountain upon which the school is built. They went to the local library to find books on the topic. No books on indigenous plants to the mountain were to be found. The fifth graders decided to write the book. So they did. They published and illustrated the book, and there are now several copies in the local library for others to use. Authentic curriculum and instruction are attributes of EfS. This is a beautiful example of EfS. It is an example of an authentic contribution by students in school to the sustainability of the place in which they live. The process was as relevant as the content of the book itself.

Example THREE: Another example of our work with schools includes the development of two full courses of study for the NYC Board of Education.  A new Participation in Government course, Inventing the Future: Leadership and Participation for the 21st Century and an Entrepreneurship course, Business and Entrepreneurship for the 21st Century are learner-centered, standards-based, assessment-driven, and differentiated, all attributes of EfS. Each course was accompanied by a series of professional development programs for teachers and both were very successful at accomplishing the learning outcomes for teachers and students that they were designed to achieve.

Example FOUR: A Pre-K teacher of 3-4 year olds at the Denver Green School is a Reggio-trained teacher. She is a master of constructivist education.  The EfS learning outcomes and content standards worried her, because she wanted her students to drive their own inquiry. Her curiosity and dedication to Education for Sustainability (the mission of the school) inspired her to teach for Healthy Commons. Her students have a play space that is a commons that the kids share. She decided that it would be useful if her students understood their rights to, and responsibilities for, that commons. She thought it would take the entire school year. She called me in October and said, “They’ve already got it! They are applying it and testing it and are transferring it outside of school…now what am I going to do?” The kids understood very quickly the difference between “mine” and “ours” and embraced the idea that the commons were that upon which we all depend and for which we are all responsible. It was a powerful reminder of how quickly children and young people learn and apply what they have learned.

The LAST Example (for now): Earlier I mentioned our work with seventeen districts in the Putnam Northern Westchester BOCES in NY. Hundreds of teachers are involved in innovating and writing exemplary curriculum units that other districts can subscribe to (www.pnwboces.org/efs). Some teachers in the 3rd -5th grade teacher cohort decided they wanted to teach about the Commons as well (the Commons is one of the favorite EfS Standards among teachers). They had chosen a book entitled, Our Commons, by Molly Bang. The teachers were so excited the librarian found a book on the Commons, and they wanted to use it in the unit. Halfway through the book, however, the author starts talking about the state of our local and global Commons…all bad news. I was concerned.  We talked about the brain’s reaction to fear and how it produces the “away response” in people.  We discussed what the unintended consequences would be of scaring ten-year-old children with the bad news of our current reality and how we could solicit engagement and creativity and help them to turn the problems into opportunities to create positive change. This is not the field of Education About Unsustainability. It is the field of Education for Sustainability.  One of the teachers found the solution: “We can take the kids through the first half of the book, then challenge them to write their own endings to the book.” It was brilliant.  The plan is to send the students’ new endings to the author so that she can read their ideas for creating healthy Commons.

6. Pramod: In my experience, K-12 public education and the role of teachers in its success (or failure) has always been one of the most contentious and difficult issues in the United States. Recently, there has been much praise as well as vilification of the public education system. Amidst the push for privatization of the school system, how does your work around Education for Sustainability fit in? How does your work empower public (or private) schools and teachers to succeed and thrive?

Jaimie: Many people have given up on public schools and yet we keep sending the majority of our children there. It is a bad scenario. We can either give up on them and create something else in their stead, or we can transform them into learning organizations that contribute to our children’s individual and collective potential and that of the living systems upon which our lives depend  (we actually like a bit of both.) We cannot, I would argue, continue to send the majority of our nation’s children to places for thirteen years of their lives that we have abandoned financially, psychologically and emotionally.  That’s just a disaster. That’s part of the problem. I’ll say that upfront.

Schooling has not, for the most part, evolved and changed with the evolving and changing world in which we live.  It’s no secret.  The old industrial form for education (public and independent schools can both be guilty of this) is part of the reason our schools are failing our children, our society, and our world.  We cannot blame that on our teachers. Actually no blame can be assigned to any one of the players responsible for K-12 education in our communities. All systems are perfectly designed to get the results they get (Senge). Education in the U.S. is a systemic problem. Schools that are still modeled after the industrial revolution were not designed to change, were not designed to respond to, or to make change, and were not even designed to produce learning. They were designed to train people to work in factories. We know the history of schooling here in the United States. Schools are outdated if they are teaching the disciplines in silos, if class periods are forty-two minutes long or close to it (which no research on learning supports, by the way), and if teachers are still standing, delivering, and testing for recall. They will not be successful in the 21st Century and they will not prepare our children and young people to be successful. It is a design challenge to be sure. You can put that design challenge on top of challenges presented by the No Child Left Behind initiative that put many public school systems in a tailspin, which on the one hand was useful, and on the other hand destructive. Useful in that they asked teachers/districts to be accountable for student learning and student performance, destructive because of the unintended consequences of test preparation and a focus on tests. Test scores are an indicator of success; they are not the goal of education.

How does Education for Sustainability address the current reality of schooling in the U.S. today? We create learning organizations that are vision-oriented and feedback driven. We improve the relationships between schools and their communities, which generates emergent properties that benefit the health of both by accelerating the shift toward sustainability in those places. We inspire educators with aspirational goals, high quality teaching and learning, and low tolerance for mediocrity or failure. We stand for authentic teaching and learning and youth leadership. We use all the best instructional practices that improve teaching and learning, including backwards design in our curriculum planning with educators, curriculum documentation and mapping, and the use of data (feedback in the form of student work, evidence of growth over time and, yes, standardized test scores) to inform practices continuously improving through teacher development and critical conversations. We use learner-centered, standards-based, feedback driven, place and project-based, differentiated instruction in EfS (to name a few). We increase critical, creative, and systems thinking, which contributes to good test scores and college acceptances while contributing to civic engagement and the sustain-ability of human life on the planet. EfS is 21st Century education at its best.

7. Pramod: At the Cloud Institute, you value the importance of educating “for sustainability” rather than “about sustainability.” What is the difference you have found between these two? At Prescott College Ph.D. program in Sustainability Education, we also talk about education as sustainability. In our interpretation, if “education for sustainability” could be about enabling people to do no harm to the people or the planet, “education as sustainability” is to actually do good to people and the planet as much as possible. Any thoughts you have on the emerging vocabularies we use and conceptualizations?  Have these words and concepts been helpful to you and your work?

Jaimie: It is clear that people educating for sustainability do not all have a shared vocabulary with shared meanings. What you call “education as sustainability—actually do good to people and the planet as much as possible,” we would call educating for sustainability by contributing to the regenerative capacity of all living systems. What you call “educating for sustainability—doing no harm to the people or the planet” we call “better than a poke in the eye” but we have higher aspirations for EfS than that. As I mentioned earlier, the Cloud Institute’s framework for Education for Sustainability is designed to contribute to our individual and collective potential and that of the living systems upon which our lives depend (also see questions 3 and 5 above). The ultimate goal is regeneration, of course. However, it’s no easier a word to sell than sustainability…which is why we don’t use it in marketing materials. Bill McDonough, who is famous for Cradle to Cradle Design, always talks about how wrong it is to aspire to doing less bad when doing more good is so much better. We agree with Bill on this and many other points.  More good is what we aspire to.   

When we educate about sustainability we treat sustainability as a topic. In my opinion, its use strictly as a topic is limiting and does not allow for what I believe is its highest and best use. To us sustainability and regeneration (whatever is considered the most aspirational goal) is the name for the desired condition we are educating for. I think the greatest value to us is that the concepts of sustainability and regeneration have their value as aspirational and measurable destinations.

The reason I don’t abandon the word sustainability is that you can measure it. There are measurable indicators of sustainability. We can measure whether we are using more resources faster than the replenishment rate. We can measure our Ecological Footprint.  It is the Ecological Footprint that has made it possible for us to realize that we are using bio capacity on Earth faster than it is being replenished, and that is that the very definition of unsustainable. We are constantly looking at stocks and flows and looking at the health of the systems upon which our lives depend. We measure the quality of the water, the air, the state of our Commons, the health of our wetlands, fish stocks, top soil, public health, the gap between rich and poor, graduation rates, etc. These are all indicators of sustainability that we can measure. We use the indicators we have, and we are developing new and better measures all the time. How are our education systems doing ? We can measure it.  If we put it all together in a place, we have sustainable community indicators. I think the fact that we can measure to what extent we are moving toward or away from sustainability (and even regeneration) is very useful.

8. Pramod: You have also been enthusiastic about considering schools as learning organizations. Your approach to EfS seems to be informed by a whole systems approach. I will throw one more metaphor for your consideration: schools as ecosystems. How successful have you been in getting across these ideas to school administrators, teachers, and parents?

Jaimie: In schools that “learn,” everyone is encouraged to keep thinking, innovating, collaborating, talking candidly, improving their capabilities, self-correcting, and making personal commitments to a shared future… 

We have a description of our whole systems approach on our website at /our-approach

To me, the difference between using the term “schools as ecosystems” vs. “schools as learning organizations” is the perception of these two terms in the marketplace. Ecosystems conjures up the word environment and that suddenly limits the market. This is my experience. As soon as people think what we do is related to “the environment,” then either they are interested or not interested. Our research shows that consistently over time; 29% of our audiences are interested in education for sustainability because of the environment, and the other 71% want to educate for sustainability for a variety of other reasons.

On the other hand, it is sort of obvious that a school should be a learning organization—like a hospital should be a healthy hospital. It seems so obvious to people and doesn’t scare anyone away. It explains that we’re moving from industrial silos of training to a more integrated place for learning. Peter Senge coined the phrase “learning organization” in his book entitled, The Fifth Discipline. He then wrote a book called, Schools that Learn. We agree that the attributes of a learning organization are perfectly suited for schools that want to thrive in the 21st Century. That is why we use the term.  Having said that, schools are of course ecosystems, and as biomimics, it makes perfect sense to think of them as such.

9. Rosemary and Pramod: Last month (October 2010) we attended the AASHE (American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education) conference in Denver, Colorado. There we saw that assessing sustainability education was a hot topic. Could you please describe some ways that the Cloud Institute assesses student learning of EfS? How are these correlated with federal or state standards? Why is assessment important for EfS? What are the challenges posed to assessing such a form of education? What areas are in greatest need of improvement?

Jaimie: We distinguish between evaluation, assessment, and grading. When we assess, we are gathering information about what students are learning, how they are learning, what it means to them, what they know, and what they can do, using multiple indicators and sources of evidence. Assessment is used to meet a variety of evaluation needs and can be done informally (observation) or formally (tangible evidence). Assessment allows teachers to ascertain, monitor and produce learning. To evaluate is to ascribe a value to the information we have gathered. Evaluation legitimizes teachers’ and students’ assessment data. To grade is to assign a symbol/number to the evaluation.  Grading communicates evaluation information but produces no new learning. 

We use pre-post instruments to measure growth over time, formative measures all along the way, and we use summative measures at the end of units and courses to measure overall retention and success. Assessments that produce learning are doing double-duty, and that’s a good thing. There is never going to be more time, so integrating your instruction and your assessments/evaluations makes sense. Nature only integrates. We use a variety of tools to measure student performance. We regularly use prompts that promote reflective thinking and are project-based, and service learning opportunities are excellent ways for students to express what they have learned while making authentic contributions to sustainability in their communities.

Why are assessment and evaluation important? If you want to know whether you have addressed an EfS standard or any standard, you have to produce evidence of it in student work. You have to assess for it.  We want EfS to produce the kind of knowledge, thinking, and attitudes that will prepare children and young people to participate in, and to lead with us, the shift toward a sustainable future. With our EfS Standards and Performance Indicators, the proper instruments and explicit scoring criteria we can measure the acquisition and application of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that characterize EfS.  We are working toward being able to demonstrate a correlation between a comprehensive approach to EfS in schools and communities and the improvement of sustainable community indicators in those places. What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get managed.  We aim to see improvement over time.  This is not just an intellectual exercise. EfS leads to a different way of thinking that drives different behavior that produces different results—sustainable results.  We are responding to Einstein’s quote, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking we used to create them.”EfS is our contribution to that different way of thinking.

Evidence of success would include evidence of the enduring understandings of EfS and the EfS Standards and Performance Indicators embedded with the thinking skills that characterize EfS. Here is an example of how we do it:  One of the teachers we work with at the Trevor Day School in NYC teaches health and nutrition and the food pyramid in science. As a result of working together, she completely redesigned the unit to educate for EfS through food and nutrition. She chose the EfS Standards and Performance Indicators she wanted the unit to address. She designed learning opportunities and the assessments, and now we’re looking at student work to see how well she accomplished her objectives. Looking for evidence, communicating degrees of quality through rubrics, exemplars, and other forms of explicit criteria, helps students develop a frame of reference for excellence.

10.  Rosemary: To put a more human face on assessment, could you share with us a personal story of a moment or a series of moments that communicated a student or group of students “got it?” “It” being the concept of sustainability.  What did it look and feel like? What were you thinking at the time?

Jaimie: The first one that comes to mind is not one of our students but is a great story about a student from Bristol, Vermont, who eventually received a Brower Youth Award for the work she started through school. Her name is Jesse Ruth Corkins.  I always tell her story because it is exemplary. Jessie Ruth was in the fourth grade when Vermont adopted State Standards for Sustainability Education. By the time she got to 9th grade, she was not new to the concept.

In 9th grade, a science fair challenge her teacher assigned her class was to convert their school building from oil to a clean, green renewal form of energy. Jessie Ruth and her partner, another 9th grader, did just that. They did the research, the science, the math, the business case, the politics, the economics, the planning, the writing, the fundraising, the purchasing, and the project oversight and completion. The school board gave them the money to convert their school building to wood chips. They saved the building $30,000 in the first year and $90,000 in the fourth year. Jessie Ruth is a poster child for sustainability education. Every EfS Standard is evident in her work. Jessie Ruth then moved on to organize a statewide coalition called the Vermont Sustainable Heating Initiative. Her coalition received 20 million dollars and 100,000 acres from the state legislature to grow switch grasses and other plant products so Vermont could grow its own energy supply in the form of pellets. They shifted the market for pellet stoves from one stove a week to 1,000 stoves per week. That was all before Jessie graduated high school.

You see every attribute for EfS in her thinking and actions and their integration. She represents the new paradigm in every way. She’s smart, can do the math, and collaborate. That’s not something you would be able to capture in a multiple choice test, and it is not something you can produce in one course or one year. You get that over time. EfS was normal for her from 4th through 12th grade. It was embedded in her consciousness. Now she’s attending the University of Vermont.

Other examples include the 3rd grade students in Byram Hills, NY, who designed and implemented the recycling program in their school and community; the students in Portland, Oregon who saved the Swifts’ “migration rest stop” by instituting an upgrade to their school’s source of energy; the 4th grade students in Salt Lake City who responded to an RFP from the city and who won 4 ½ acres to build a  nature trail and playground and park; and the secondary students at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrence, NJ, who serve as the “research arm” of the Sustainable Lawrence initiative. These are all examples of authentic assessments that produce learning and make authentic contributions to community sustainability.

11. Rosemary: What do you think are the greatest areas within EfS in need of further research? If you were to put the call out for the next generation of sustainability educators and researchers, what would you tell them?

Jaimie: Certainly assessment and evaluation are big areas that require research. Developing longitudinal studies to track progress over time is paramount. We want to provide evidence of the correlation between EfS and the improvement of sustainable community indicators in a place.  Can we compare the data to others who are not doing EfS? We need baseline data and then we will need to set up systems to track progress over time. We need good researchers to do all of it.

We need help in designing robust assessments to measure student learning in all of the EfS Standards and Indicators. We need great rubrics and a great variety of methods to communicate performance criteria. We need to communicate to people what it looks like to meet an EfS standard. We need to determine what the best measures are. We need to know what the best ways are to assess the degrees of quality of EfS attributes. We need to know what it takes to prepare an educator to educate for sustainability, an administrator to administrate for it, etc. We need to know what kinds of capacity building and professional development works best in different contexts, and we need to have a great deal of student work that produces evidence of EfS attributes. I will give you a quick example: One of our teachers designed an elegant unit of study and was interested in addressing two performance indicators of the Multiple Perspectives Standard of EfS. She designed her unit to produce evidence in her students of respect for other’s points of view and empathy. When the teacher showed me her rubric for the unit, there was nothing about empathy and point of view articulated.  She did all that work to design and teach for those attributes but had forgotten to communicate to her students that those two EfS Performance Indicators were important. She had used an existing rubric that did a great job of assessing for the characteristics of a good essay. To analyze her students’ work, she put the work in three piles: Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations and Below Expectations.  Though the student work in the first two categories demonstrated good to excellent writing skills, none of them demonstrated empathy. The writing was indeed poor in the Below Expectations pile, but the work of two students in that pile demonstrated empathy, and they didn’t get any recognition for that. It was a simple issue to resolve.  We added respect for other’s points of view and empathy to the rubric, and the teacher decided to pay closer attention to the congruence between what she was designing for, what she was assessing for, and what she was communicating to kids was important.

How can we best help teachers to do this work? What resources do they need? What professional development opportunities do they need to relatively quickly adjust teaching and assessment practices that will improve student learning and contribute to a sustainable future? We would love to get some help from great and smart researchers out there. We’d be happy to participate in pilots and create focus groups and study teams. We can provide the research subjects, but we have received very little to no funding to do this kind of thing. It has been very difficult so far for us to get money to design and implement robust research and assessment agendas. There are a few studies out there that are fabulous and very useful. At Antioch, David Sobel has evidence of the great impact of place-based education (an attribute of EfS) on civic engagement and test scores. Employing the Environment as an Integrative Context for Learning: Closing Achievement Gap (Lieberman et al., 2002) is another good study that is useful. We need more data to prove EfS contributes to critical thinking or other benchmarks people want, like meeting state standards. We need more evidence that EfS contributes to student performance and success in life.

As Pramod himself is aware, food and learning gardens-based initiatives in Portland, Oregon, and other areas need a total assessment.

12. Pramod: Pedagogy based on a sense of place seems to be one of the areas of your focus in EFS. How do the notions of “local,” “bioregional,” “national,” and “global,” figure in your sense of place? How do you suggest a sustainable citizen would navigate between these scales and responsibilities?

Jaimie:

All of those are nested systems. A local system is nested in its bioregion, is nested in the national and political systems…etc. Nested systems are all interdependent on one another. From a systems perspectives all problems are endogenous. They arise from within the system.  If we solve our problems locally, we contribute to solving them globally. You can use the cliché both ways—think globally, act locally…and vice versa. We can’t have global sustainability without local sustainability. Linking all the locals to one another over time produces global networks of communication, shared understandings, and best practices. We are all in this together.  Prescinding is very useful in this regard.  To prescind is to look with a “zoom lens” at our local systems while, at same time, using a “wide angle lens” to keep our eyes on the big picture. We move from parts to whole and whole to parts. That’s what you’re doing all the time….negotiating and reconciling relationships between the two.

13.  Pramod: What have you found about the new generation of learners in K-12 setting? What are their characteristics? What new technologies are they using to learn and live in the world? How should EfS adapt to those new modalities of teaching and learning such as identified in the Curriculum-21 volume?

Jaimie: The learners that I come into contact with run the gamut. In general, our younger students are hungry to learn and passionate about sustainability and making a difference. As they get older, I see three groups emerging:  Some are becoming more cynical, less reflective, feeling disconnected, and have little hope for the future. Others are in denial completely—thinking that their lives will be fine, even though they see that the world is in trouble (as if, somehow, they had immunity from the results of that trouble). The third group—a growing group, thank goodness—is being educated for sustainability in one form or another, and  they are on fire to learn and to contribute to a healthy and sustainable future.

In terms of young people’s uses of technology, I think the rapid change is really challenging for adults and not that big a deal for young people if they are educated to adapt and to thrive in that context. The speed of technological change is a good example. It is easy for kids to navigate because they’re used to it, and things are always changing in their lives. There is great plasticity in the brain until the age of twelve or thirteen. There is still plasticity after that, but it is never as easy to adapt after thirteen as it is before thirteen. Once the patterns and habits kick in, we have to work hard to keep our minds open and flexible.  The role of teachers is more and more to become “guides on the side” instead of “sages on the stage.” It is a great time for constructivist education. Students don’t need teachers to deliver information anymore. Technology can provide it faster and in differentiated ways for different learners (see the School of One, NYC). We hold students back if we are standing there delivering content.

At the same time, students, and all of us, need tremendous help to not overuse technology and to navigate the use of the Internet in gathering data and doing research. Alan November, in the volume Curriculum 21 (HH Jacobs, ASCD, 2010, visit: http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Authors/Heidi-Hayes-Jacobs.aspx), tells a story in his article called, Teaching Zack to Think, about a student who was studying the Holocaust. He somehow learned through his online research that the Holocaust was really a health spa. It turns out that all the websites he used lead back to one engineering professor at a prominent university who hated Jewish people and had set up eight different websites all linked to each other, all delivering consistently bogus information. They all had northwestern.edu at the end and so the student thought they were legitimate. He could not distinguish the lies from the truth. The article then goes on to teach people how to unpack a URL to determine legitimacy. I see students all the time doing research on the Internet by Googling and picking the top three things that come up as their sources. These are some of the benefits and challenges to the use of technology in our classrooms.

I think it is common knowledge these days (though it is not all reflected on the standardized tests) that our job as educators more and more is to teach students how to do things like analyze information, distinguish opinions from facts, back up their statements with evidence, do research, be media literate, and live in community—sustainably, of course.

14. Rosemary: I had the immense pleasure of attending both a workshop you presented on assessment at Bioneers as well as the Advanced Summer Design Studio this summer (2010). Both experiences were among the best trainings I’ve been to on EfS. Could you please describe the variety of resources that the Cloud Institute offers to educators and schools (including opportunities for collaboration via the Cloud Commons)? Where might someone looking to get into EfS find you (professional conferences you present at etc.)?

Jaimie: The Summer Design Studio is a great way to get started or to continue deepening your work in EfS. Each summer teachers and administrators come from all over to design something through the lens of sustainability (units of study, curriculum maps, professional development programs, organizational change strategies, assessments…). They spend five days with us plus the one day introduction if they haven’t had it yet. They have time (our only currency) to work. It is a real treat. There is work time scheduled with optional mini-sessions and coaching when they need it. They have time and space and colleagues, resources, and the Internet. People meet each other and form affinity groups.  Everything we’re doing is encouraging learning communities so no one feels alone out there.

In our consulting work throughout the school year, we are doing more and more long-term work with schools for 3-5 years—a  whole school approach.

We also do individual professional development programs and we’re launching the upgrade of our “Cloud Commons,” a digital resource library with e-portfolio capability for educators to document, share, and receive feedback on their work. Cloud Commons is a great resource people can subscribe to. They can share units and draw on units and plans that other people have designed so that we can all learn from one another and build a repertoire of exemplary EfS materials. This next year will be very exciting.

If you are an individual or small group and district not ready to make a commitment, you can start with a One Day Intro to Sustainability and Education for Sustainability in our shop in NYC or in your own location.  You can buy our EfS Curriculum Design Studio in a Box or you can purchase some of our exemplary units and courses to get you started.

For folks who are ready to do the deeper dive and make the commitment to educating for sustainability, we have four major programs – E-learn (online), Districts Learn, Sites learn and Youth Learn. They are all beautifully described on our website at /model-programs/

15. Rosemary: While at the Cloud Summer Institute, several of us joked that we wished there was more than one Jaimie—we want your expertise and energy not just in New York City but also across the country and world. If you could imagine for one moment that financial resources for the Cloud Institute were unlimited and the demand for EfS was skyrocketing, how might you envision the role and work of The Cloud Institute?

Jaimie: Thanks Rosemary, I appreciate that. What we need are models to be able to point to and sites around the country that are doing this work seriously, robustly, and comprehensively. We also need to do more product and service development. We need more exemplars and more tools/webinars/videos to make it really easy for people to do this work. We need to do site development and to build capacity in schools and in communities to do this work. We would develop partnerships with Schools of Education, and we would work with sites that are ready to do this work that just need the money to do it seriously. They would be willing to participate in the action research and the externally driven research and evaluation agendas. I know that there are a great many sites that are ready.  We just need the significant financial investment to be made.

16.       Pramod and Rosemary: Any closing thoughts or comments you would like to share with the readers of the Journal of Sustainability Education?

Jaimie:

Here are my five one-liners, elevator speech and sound bites:

  • Live by the Natural Laws
  • Read the Feedback
  • A healthy and sustainable future is possible we just have to educate for it
  • It all begins with a change in thinking
  • We are all responsible

Jaimie P. Cloud is the founder and president of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in New York City.  The Cloud Institute is dedicated to the vital role of education in creating awareness, fostering commitment, and guiding actions toward a healthy, secure and sustainable future. Ms. Cloud has written several book chapters and articles, teaches extensively, and writes and facilitates the collaborative development of numerous instructional units and programs that are designed to teach across disciplines through the lens of sustainability. In addition she serves as an advisor, board or committee member to several organizations with related goals and interests.

EfS in Action: Determining Water Quality

Nancy Kuster is a second-grade teacher and recent graduate of the New Jersey Learns Program. After studying macro-invertebrates the second grade class  went to Green Brook to determine the water quality - which turned out to be good based on the samples found living in it. They also made "up cycled" planters out of water bottles to grow milkweed from seed to attract Monarch butterflies. This is EfS in action.

Vertical Gardens Bring Greenery to Cities

Repost from: http://www.today.com/video/today/51619345#51619345
Original Post Date: April 22, 2013

Stephen Ritz, a teacher in New York City public schools and the founder of Green Bronx Machine, shows how vertical “living wall” gardens can teach kids about protecting the environment and bring a little green to concrete jungles.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hawaiian Student Shares Why Sustainability is Important

MAY 2013 UPDATE: In March we shared information about one high school student in Hawaii named Trevor Tanaka who had proposed to the Hawaii State Legislature a resolution to require that the Hawaiian Department of Education formally embed Education for Sustainability into the core curriculum. Resolution HCR178 HD1 SD1 was adopted by the legislature on April 24th!!!! We congratulate Trevor, the educators who inspired him, and the legislature who not only listened to him, but who agreed with him.

We are humbled by Trevor’s grace and tenacity, and that of all the young people who are accelerating the shift toward sustainability by showing up, standing up, and taking the lead. 

 

The resolution’s final language can be seen here

http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2013/bills/HCR178_SD1_.htm


HCR178’s measure history and status can be seen here

http://capitol.hawaii.gov/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HCR&billnumber=178&year=2013

 

Repost from: http://www.hawaii247.com/2012/09/12/student-shares-why-sustainability-is-important
Original Post Date: September 12, 2012

By Trevor Tanaka | Special to Hawaii 24/7

It was September 2011. The state was abuzz over the upcoming APEC meeting in Honolulu in November where President Obama and 20 other heads of state would be gathering. All eyes would be on Hawaii.

It was the first time, since 1993, that the U.S. would be hosting APEC’s annual meeting. In an effort “to engage our local youth and provide them with a once in a lifetime opportunity to be a part of APEC,” the host committee sponsored an essay contest open to high school students.

Five winners would have the amazing opportunity to attend this premier economic forum in the Asia-Pacific Region.

While it sounded like an easy enough topic, I quickly realized that I really did not know enough about sustainability to write my essay. So that’s when my process of learning about sustainability started in earnest.

It also made me really think. Why would someone like me — a junior in high school, and a good student who had taken years of different science classes –- why was I having such a difficult time with this topic? Thus began my journey to learn about sustainability and the importance it plays in our lives today, tomorrow, and in the future of our world.

We all know that sustainability and clean energy are essential to Hawaii due to our location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Our current dependence on imports threatens our resources and our way of life. We also know that Hawaii is rich in renewable energy sources that have the potential to decrease our dependence on imports, especially imported oil.

I really believe that our ability to educate ourselves about finding the right balance of growing our economy, keeping our land healthy, and preserving our natural resources and culture is essential to our survival. In fact, our state is in a unique position to become a leader in our nation and possibly the world.

Through my research, I found out that some private schools in Hawaii offer courses/programs in some form of sustainable education (green technology, renewable energy, etc.). HPA (Hawaii Preparatory Academy) has its world-famous LEED-platinum certified Energy Lab.

Other schools incorporate sustainable education into existing courses, such as Environmental Science. Wouldn’t it be great if all students were given the equal opportunity to learn about the importance of sustainability and the role it plays in our lives today and will play in the future?

I decided to put my thoughts into action. I crafted Resolution No. 25 that requires all public schools in Hawaii to incorporate sustainability and clean energy units and related technologies as part of the Science curriculum.

In December 2011, I traveled to Honolulu to attend the 2011 Secondary Student Conference (SSC) held at the Hawaii State Capitol. The purpose of the SSC is to “provide secondary school students the opportunity to identify, discuss and arrive at recommended solutions to major youth problems, with emphasis on school problems that require the attention and joint action by the students, the Department of Education and the Hawaii State Legislature.”

At the Conference I presented the Resolution No. 25 to the 200 student delegates. I was very excited when 85 percent voted to support it!

This spring, I was nominated by Nancy Redfeather from The Kohala Center to serve as a youth delegate from the Big Island to the Stone Soup Leadership Institute’s 8th Annual Youth Leadership Summit for Sustainable Development on Martha’s Vineyard.

Five of us from the Big Island traveled together, representing the Sustainable Hawaii Youth Leadership Initiative (SHYLI).

Each SHYLI youth delegate created a power-point presentation on one aspect of sustainability: Agriculture, architecture, cultures, energy and environment. Mine was on Sustainable Education.

I expanded my research to learn about how other states and countries are involved with sustainable education. The New Jersey Sustainable Schools Network is promoting education for a sustainable future in all public schools in Jew Jersey.

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development: 2005-2014 is a global initiative with the goal of reorienting education worldwide.

China has designated 1,000 public schools for Education for Sustainable Development. Japan has included Education for Sustainable Development into its national curriculum guidelines.

Every university in Sweden is required by law to teach sustainable development. I felt empowered knowing this. Just think Hawaii could become one of the leaders of sustainable education!

At the Summit, I met young people from islands around the world who are championing green initiatives in their communities. I also learned how people throughout history have struggled to keep their dreams alive.

I was inspired by youth leader Amira Madisen from the Wampanoag Tribe Gayhead-Aquinnah, who shared how they lost their language and are now working hard to reclaim it.

I also had the opportunity to share my vision for Sustainable Education in all Hawaii public schools on a national radio program – “Keeping it Moving with Marsha Reeves-Jews.” The entire Summit experience gave me hope and inspired me to take the next steps to pass the Resolution No. 25.

We are now gathering letters of support – from our elected officials to business and community leaders as well as young people and educators. I believe we all need to be concerned about sustainability.

My hope is we will build enough support to pass Resolution No. 25. Here are some highlights:

BE IT RESOLVED, that the Science curriculum for all public high schools in Hawaii be supplemented by the integration of sustainability/clean energy units that include the development of Hawaii’s energy, environmental, ocean, recyclable and technological resources; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the integration of sustainability/clean energy units in the Science curriculum will help educate students about the role that sustainability/clean energy plays in balancing the needs of Hawaii’s growing economy with protecting its environment and resources in a socially responsible way.

I want to see that all high school students throughout the State of Hawaii have the opportunity to take classes in or be exposed to some form of sustainable education as part of their science curriculum.

This will allow Hawaii’s youth to have a better understanding about sustainability and the connection it has with our way of life, especially here in Hawaii.

It is essential that everyone understand that keeping our environment healthy, keeping our economy healthy, and keeping our people healthy are all interrelated and will ultimately allow our culture, traditions, way of life, and unique island home to not just survive but thrive for generations to come.

Trevor Tanaka,
Senior, Konaweana High School

Putting Lessons into Learning... EfS in Action

repost from: http://acrossthewatershed.blogspot.com/2012/11/putting-lessons-into-learning.html


 

Inspired by her attendance at a couple of GSWA teacher education workshop, Great Swamp Watershed Association member and Madison Borough resident Nancy Kuster recently incorporated some of the water education activities she learned into her class at the Sundance School in North Plainfield.  Kuster is a second grade teacher with 15 years of experience, and also serves as a facilitator for Awakening the Dreamer - a non-profit organization that helps people co-create a just, thriving, and sustainable world.  Thanks to her GSWA workshop experiences and a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, she was able to continue her sustainability education by enrolling in The Cloud Institute’s New Jersey Learns program. Now, she is teaming up with GSWA to develop more ideas for sustainability lessons that she can introduce to her students.

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Kuster is developing her new curriculum by introducing year-long, integrated units on sustainability into her daily curriculum.  As she conducts these lessons, she asks her students to think about cycles and systems, including decomposition, product, and water cycles. Along the way, her children have learned that the water cycle is much more than just precipitation and evaporation.  And they have come to understand where their household water comes from and where it goes once they are finished with it.

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"Second graders don't typically spend a lot of time thinking about resources and pollution issues," Kuster said, "but they are definitely capable of understanding that we have limited fresh water, and that we need to start taking care of our environment."

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After a presentation on water use and the bigger water picture, Kuster's students used their artistic talents and language skills to make a mural explaining the water cycle as they understood it.  They also enjoyed a presentation about non-point source pollution and learned how to clean up after themselves.

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In the days and weeks to come, each child in Kuster's second grade classroom will be writing their own "Journey of a Drop"—a story aimed at describing a water drop's long trip from sky to earth and back again.  What a fantastic program our teacher workshops have inspired!

 

 >  >  >  > Learn more about the New Jersey Learns Program  <  <  <  <

The Las Vegas Downtown Project

The Cloud Institute is proud to announce that Jaimie Cloud will be a special consultant to the Education Initiative of the Las Vegas Downtown Project . We are working with an all-star team to create a 21st century state-of-the-art school system that works in partnership with the community to educate for a healthy, happy and sustainable future. We will begin with an early childhood center. This first learning community will enroll ages 6 weeks through kindergarten. The project involves the green renovation of an old and beautiful church building and grounds and is designed to integrate indoor and outdoor spaces for learning, growing, celebration and reflection.

Connie Yeh heads up the Education Initiative and Dr. Meg Murray is leading the research and design efforts of this extraordinary project. Jaimie Cloud joins Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Marie Alcock, Pat Wolfe, Trish Martin, Michelle Gielan, Ellen Booth Church and Cecilia Cruse, Ginny Streckewald and Debi Crimmins on the global think tank team to create the new paradigm for 21st century teaching and learning designed for the future we want.


Learn more about this exciting project here: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/dec/13/planning-zappos-school-long-community-involvement

Systems Thinking Leads to Long-Term View For Students at Trevor Day School (By Grant Lichtman)

Reposted from: http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/systems-thinking-leads-to-long-term-view-for-students-at-trevor-day-school/

Teaching context, the weaving together of content, is more powerful than teaching content alone. But teaching context to our students allows them to understand that one set of contextual relationships. Teaching them the skills of how to acquire context allows them to develop context on their own for the rest of their lives. This is the challenge of teaching students to become life-long self-evolving learners. It is hard. For years I have been looking for a school or set of educators who do this overtly, not assuming that through a generally good education their students will acquire these skills, but actually teaching them alongside the other critical skills of education like reading, and writing and math. If you are interested in how a school is teaching students to be systems thinkers, to both understand and create their own long term perspectives, read on.

Trevor Day School is a multi-campus New York City preK-12, and I only got to visit with the elementary division, but I also got to spend a lot of time with their two educational leaders, veteran Head Pam Clarke and Assistant Head Lisa Alberti. They told me that Trevor has had some rough patches in its history, including the difficult merger of two schools. They also have a cultural history of self-reflection. Their teacher conferences, even at the lowest grade levels, have always been organized around a student-teacher meeting to set goals, followed by a student-teacher-family conference to review performance and talk about how the student-set goals can best be achieved. Recently they have undertaken the departmental reviews by external teams that so many schools find helpful in revising curriculum and teaching methods. Trevor takes advantage of their location and invites university experts in along with K-12 colleagues on these reviews. They filter the reviews and reports to steer changes along pathways that are consistent with their mission. As we discussed, all ideas are not good ideas, or good for the time, and many schools fail to take the important step of filtering out change for the sake of change.

The exciting takeaway from Trevor is that they are intentionally teaching the skills of systems thinking in order to truly instill an understanding of longitudinal perspective in the students. The details that follow are mostly from the lower grades, and Pam and Lisa were clear that this mindset has not migrated completely upwards to the upper grades. But is it moving as the students bring these understandings with them.

Systems thinking is the core set of skills that allows students to understand complex relationships, which, of course, are at the heart of the complicated world in which we live. (Full disclosure of bias: they are also at the heart of my teaching and book, The Falconer. If you are interested, look to the right of this page and check it out; you can download the intro for free.) Many believe that we can’t teach these skills at a young age; they have been at the top of Bloom’s taxonomy and we have incorrectly thought that we have to teach all the lower parts of Bloom before students can get to the top. (See my post on Flipping and Doubling Bloom.) Trevor is proving we can teach these skills, and that, as with all skills, it is critical to have a multi-year, integrated sequence of exposure and practice.

As with many of the other schools I have visited, it was clear to me that none of this would have happened without the highly intentional direction and support of Head Pam Clarke. She is not only a strong and dynamic leader, but also a keen academician who has been a leader in what we call 21C since well before the dawn of this young century. Getting faculty to collaborate along all-school pathways is never easy and Pam had to put people and processes into the “right places on the bus” in order to get the pieces moving in coordination. She is also a supporter of teaching systems thinking, which is a key, if not the key, to so much of the cross-grade collaboration that is deeply rich with what we call 21C skills.

We visited a 2nd grade class that is studying plant biology. The teacher was using a Venn diagram to introduce the system of nutrients (sun, water, soil) required for plant germination. The second graders not only learned and understood the use of Venn, but they independently saw how to solve for missing nutrients in a scientific experiment. Our visit ended with the students and teachers huddled on the floor, placing seed pots into the spaces of the Venn relative to their upcoming experiments. Venn diagrams are a tool, but they also represent a mindset, both of which can be extrapolated in the future to more complex, multi-variable systems. Trevor extends this long-term view of the world through its off-campus relationships, including a forest conservation and biodiversity project in upstate New York, and with ongoing research projects in Central Park and on the Hudson River:

  • 1st graders have a 2.5-hour block of time in Central Park every week to research and collect data on plants that are revisited every year to compile and compare longitudinal data.
  • 2nd graders study the system of trees, and adopt and research individual trees in the Park.
  • 3rd graders research and collect field data on the Hudson, and participate in a major Snapshot day where many university researchers collect and compile data on the ecology and health of the river.
  • 5th graders study the local marsh communities, and fold environmental indicators in to their study of economics.
  • 7th graders study biodiversity indicators including salamander populations in the Black Rock Forest.

Through these programs, the students develop a common language of what it means to have a long view of the world around us. They prescribe to Jaimie Clouds ideas of common and shared resources and try to understand their own world, from the classroom to their areas of study, within this context.

Lisa told me they do not see the choice that stresses some schools between being “rigorous” and being “supportive”. Support is a core part of the culture demonstrated in their use of space, as they have Common Time and a Common Room that is a core for each group of grade level classes. Teacher’s desks are in these Common Rooms; students can find help and a place to work, and the teachers have dedicated time for collaboration and a place to meet.

I wish I had time to visit the other divisions at Trevor, but my dance card was full! It was exciting to see intentional systems thinking instruction, even at the youngest ages validating much of my assumptions about teaching these critical skills to our students. Now, my only worry is that Pam is an expert editor and proof reader and she is sure to find some typos or errors in this post!

Green Ribbon School Awards | Denver Green School & EfS

Green Ribbon School Awards

We are proud to congratulate our clients and partner schools who each received the 2012 Green Ribbon School Award this year. "Schools that take a green approach cut costs on their utility bills, foster healthy and productive classrooms, and prepare students to thrive in the 21st century economy," said Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "These Green Ribbon School award winners are taking outstanding steps to educate tomorrow's environmental leaders, and demonstrating how sustainability and environmental awareness make sense for the health of our students and our country."


U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools (ED-GRS) is a federal recognition program that opened in September 2011. Honored schools exercise a comprehensive approach to creating "green" environments through reducing environmental impact, promoting health, and ensuring a high-quality environmental and outdoor education to prepare students with the 21st century skills and sustainability concepts needed in the growing global economy.


The 78 awarded schools were named winners from among nearly 100 nominees submitted by 30 state education agencies, the District of Columbia and the Bureau of Indian Education. More than 350 schools completed applications to their state education agencies. Among the list of winners are 66 public schools, including 8 charters, and 12 private schools. In total, the schools are composed of 43 elementary, 31 middle and 26 high schools with around 50 percent representing high need, and at-risk schools.

 

We would like to acknowledge:


Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Kamuela, Hawaii
The Willow School, Gladstone, New Jersey
Gladstone High School, Gladstone, Oregon
Tahoma Junior High School, Tahoma, Washington

The Denver Green School, Denver, Colorado


 

We would like to give a special shout out to our most recent and youngest school partner, the Denver Green School (DGS) because 2012 marked the end of their second year as a Denver Public School. DGS is a Neighborhood Innovation School in southeast Denver – meaning they implement their own unique program design, approved through a rigorous process by the Denver Public School Board. The innovation they proposed was Education for Sustainability. Their emphasis on project-based learning allows teachers and students to engage in relevant, self-directed, teacher-facilitated learning. DGS refers to the current national "Green Movement"- but they also believe that "green" has a deeper meaning. They believe that green must mean a focus on the whole student and the whole community. 

 

Apparently the Denver Public Schools (DPS) agrees, and so do the test scores. DGS was also recently awarded the DPS’s “green school” designation—which in that context means that DGS met and exceeded the DPS’s expectations for academic achievement this year. Of course, at the heart of their success, is their focus on carbon footprint reduction and on environmental and social sustainability. Think deep dark green squared! Next year DGS will complete their growth as a Pre-K-8 school at 550 students. 

 

The Cloud Institute began working with the leaders and faculty partners of DGS one year before they opened their doors. They did it right. Even though almost everyone coming to work at DGS had another job that year, by the time the school opened, the team was ready. Every year the faculty has worked with the Cloud Institute to design, document and map curriculum aligned with State, Common Core and EfS Standards, and the faculty has worked tirelessly to produce learner centered instruction that educates for the future we want, while administering assessments that produce learning.

 

Additional highlights from the first two years include the ongoing study of the rights to, and responsibilities for tending the Commons by the Pre-School students, an energy audit and reduction of energy consumption led by the second graders, and the small group of 6th graders that facilitated our fish game simulation to 75 US Green Building Council Members in the first year (with the usual results). This year, another group of 6th graders determined that DGS has used ONE MILLION gallons of water a year LESS since it opened (with hundreds of people in the building and a CSA Farm on the property run by their partner Sprout City Farms) then it did when it was unoccupied for the several years before it opened. That is what we call contributing to the regenerative capacity of a place. Elegant curriculum and instruction, co-leadership, faculty partners, community involvement—THIS is the new paradigm. It works. 

 

It gives us great pleasure once again, to honor the Denver Green School, Hawaii Prep Academy, The Willow School, Gladstone High School, Tahoma Junior High School and all the other winners of the 2012 Green Ribbon Schools Award for their contribution to a healthy and sustainable future for us all.

Cranford School District to Build Community Sustainability Team | By Glenn Eisenberg, The Cranford Chronicle

The Cranford school district has been selected by the Cloud Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to sustainability education, to receive funding for its “Education for Sustainability” program, in order to build a team of community volunteers who can work with the program.

The grant of $17,000 a year for the next three years, entitled “New Jersey Schools Learn,” was provided by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to the Cloud Institute, which then picked Cranford and two other school districts in New Jersey to pass the funding on to last spring. It will be used for professional development, curriculum development, and support resources through the team.

The Education for Sustainability program, which is run through the Cloud Institute, was pushed for by Cranford Environmental Commission member Mary Catherine Sudiak and the district’s Science Supervisor Lisa Hayeck, both of whom were trained by the Cloud Institute to facilitate the program.

Continue to NJ.com to read the full article