Engaging Every Student

Throughout my career I have enjoyed incorporating environmental education into other subjects I was teaching. For example, when I was a technology integration specialist at the elementary level, I did a project with 4^th grade students in which they worked together in research teams to solve the mystery of why a rainforest tree (the durian, an amazingly stinky, but delicious delicacy) wasn’t producing fruit. And when I was teaching 9^th grade social studies we looked at the geographic and environmental factors that led to the development of Ancient Greek city-states. In my experience, students enjoyed lessons like these that explored the interactions between humans and the environment, especially if they included hands-on components and/or time outside connecting with nature. For example, by making a masking tape outline of Greece and moving classroom desks, we could create a model of Greece with its rugged mountains and coastline, and then students could race to establish settlements on the limited pieces of land available. If this way they could better understand how the geography contributed to independent, competing city-states, while having a great time in the process and using very little class time. Taking students outside to a natural area to read and discuss Aristotle, the way the great scholar himself regularly did with his students, also made lasting impressions on students, as many of them reminded me in the years following their time in my world history class. Students need to be actively engaged, and it is especially effective if experiences focus on connections with nature; students need many opportunities to discover the importance of the environment in their lives and the lives of others living in other regions and times in history.

These themes were wonderfully explored at the North American Association of Environmental Educators’ (NAAEE) annual conference, as well as their Research Symposium, both held recently in Portland, OR. Countless sessions focused on how to integrate environmental education into the broader curriculum, through activities such as simulations and those incorporating technology such as Google Earth. The sessions and conversations at the conference and symposium helped me to further refine my understanding and ideas about environmental and sustainability education.

Although I have been passionate about protecting the environment for over 20 years, and an educator and developer of educational resources for over 15 years, the various environmental challenges our world is facing have recently spurred me to look at even more ways to link these interests. The conference was one of the most important vehicles to help me do this, and in some ways I feel that the journey is just beginning.

I have been working on a series of activity books that teach environmental and sustainability education to students in fun ways that also teach and reinforce other academic skills, and I am renewed by a belief that my work is supported by the available research and needs of teachers and students. In addition, recent developments have encouraged a belief that the educational process can be transformed to integrate environmental and sustainability education into the daily lives of students. In particular, I was surprised to learn that the state of California, like the state of Washington as discussed in a previous post, was ready to move forward with integrated environmental literacy standards for all students, K-12.

At the main NAAEE conference, I attended a session conducted by Lori Mann, an environmental education consultant who has been helping to manage California’s Environmental Education Initiative for the past several years. In painstaking detail, she explained how the various state agencies and administrators all had to sign off on the measures that, like Washington’s, would seek to integrate environmental and sustainability information into every grade, K-12.

Lori explained how in 2005 it was state Assembly Bill 1721 that had started the process of developing that states’ Environmental Principles and Concepts (EPCs) that would eventually be developed into curriculum and disseminated around the state. Further, all textbook producers would need to integrate the EPCs if they wanted their books to be placed on the all-important list of approved materials which enabled school districts to use their textbook money to purchase them. Unlike Washington’s standards, however, the EPCs would be entirely voluntary, at least in the beginning; schools would all be expected to receive information about the EPCs, but teachers would not be required to teach them. However, I still feel better knowing that our most populous state is taking this significant step to advance environmental and sustainability education, especially as the measures are now finally being implemented. As Lori mentioned, one long-term benefit of this will likely be that, because of California’s size and the importance of it as a market for school resources, most of the textbook publishers, and probably also developers of other educational resources like software, will integrate the EPCs into their materials; these will then be sold throughout the country, as well, benefiting countless other students and teachers in the process.

Another topic that came up at many points during the conference was systems thinking. This was not a new concept to me, but I have not yet fully integrated it into my teaching and educational resources. It is a fascinating way to view the world, and a very important framework to teach sustainability; I will be researching it much more in the weeks to come and how to integrate it into the materials I am producing. It is my hope that this, like the other information I have been learning about environmental and sustainability education, will allow me to produce educational resources that will be meaningful for students and help them integrate the knowledge into all of their endeavors.