Regional Collaboration

Together, we embark on our mission of engaging and empowering all K-12 educators and students to contribute to a socially and ecologically sustainable community for current and future generations. Along with our partners, we provide learner-centered curricula, experiential learning, and additional supports to meet this goal.

Leadership Development and Strategic Planning

• Strategic Planning - Strategic planning occurs when you have a clear sense of your strengths and potential areas of growth. A strengths assessment has been created to support districts in determining what and where they want to improve their ability to educate for sustainability through teaching and learning, policies and procedures, community outreach, buildings and grounds and transportation. This facilitated process is very straight forward and can be done in a formal or informal context with individuals, a district team, or a school building team.

• Workshop for Sustainability and Resilience - Building and district-level leaders will discuss and develop strategies to implement school-based changes in curriculum and instruction, operational logistics (including energy efficiency), and student leadership in support of sustainability in schools and communities.

Professional Learning

• Introduction to Education for Sustainability – This training serves as the foundation for all other Education for Sustainability work. Educators will develop a shared understanding and vocabulary of Sustainability and Education for Sustainability (EfS), generate a personal rationale for educating for sustainability, and become inspired and hopeful about contributing to the shift toward a sustainable future through education.

• Catskill Conversations Series – Through four diverse and interconnected discussions students and adults will explore the value and relationships between nature, history, music, and art as it relates to sustainability.

Curriculum Design, Development and Evaluation

• Assessing Project-based Learning that Educates for Sustainability – Teachers will have the opportunity to design self-contained projects or to incorporate them as summative assessments of existing units of study. The course will address support for content, instruction, and assessment of education for sustainability.

• Five-day Curriculum Design Studio – Understanding by Design will be used to reorient, innovate, build, and map curricula to meet academic and education for sustainability standards. Working within a living building, which is platinum LEED certified, participants will learn how to embed standards, gain resources, participate in learning circles and peer reviews. Coaching will help develop units and protocols to help prepare students to lead the shift toward a sustainable future.

Student Empowerment & Engagement

• Introduction to Biomimicry – Actual bio-inspired products are used to help better understand nature as a source of ideas and the concept of bio-inspired design. One exercise will have students match organisms with the inspired products to help introduce the concept of studying nature’s best ideas to solve human challenges.

• Virtual Field Trips – These nature centered programs will be offered to schools to inspire interactive and inquiry-based learning. Topics will include Pond and Stream Investigations, The Power of Pollinators, Forest Invasives, Birds of Prey, and Social/Emotional Strategies. Interwoven in each “field trip” is a connection to sustainability, environmental stewardship and New York State Learning Standards.

Partners