Wachstumshormone

Nov

21

CREST Farm to School

Filed Under Environmental Education, Environmental Health, Environmental Literacy, Farm-to-School, Food, School Gardening | Leave a Comment

CRESTphoto1by Bob Carlson

CREST is an environmental education center operated by the West Linn-Wilsonville School District which is located just south of Portland, Oregon. One of the key CREST programs is the CREST Farm . The farm is located on surplus district property. Currently, a half-acre of land is producing vegetables for school cafeterias and other uses. Last summer, middle school and high school interns learned how to grow, maintain, and sell vegetables from a farm stand on site. Next summer, the students will operate a 20 family CSA in addition to running the farm stand.

The farm is also used as a field trip destination for K-12 students year round. Each season approximately 600 students visit the farm. Learning activities are tailored to the needs of individual teachers or teams of teachers. Many of the trips emphasize wellness and the benefits of eating fresh healthy fruits and vegetables. Other field trips focus on sustainable agricultural practices that help conserve resources and promote a healthy ecosystem. Lessons include biodynamic farming practices such as maintenance of soil health, natural pest management, crop rotation and wise use of water. Students participate in hands on activities including: planting, thinning, pruning, composting, amending soil, and harvesting.

All of the farm lessons promote ecological literacy by helping kids understand their connection to food and how the production of food can affect ecosystems. They gain an understanding of the delicate balance of ecosystems and the interconnected web of living things.

One of the goals of the farm is to give students a chance to make a difference in their community and the world by participating in service learning. Some students participate in projects that provide food to local food banks and support sustainable agriculture projects in other communities and other countries.

A number of CREST staff help run the farm and create meaningful educational experiences for students.  A professional farmer lives on-site and provides technical expertise, a part-time grant-funded educator runs field trips and the internship program, and an AmeriCorps member recruits community volunteers and establishes systems for distributing the food to school cafeterias. She is also offering tasting programs to schools to promote increased consumption of vegetables and fruits.

Submitted by Bob Carlson, CREST Director
Phone: (503) 673-7349
Fax: (503) 570-2969
11265 WIlsonville Rd.
Wilsonville Or. 97070

Dec

3

Best of Clearing CD-ROM Now Available!

Filed Under Art and EE, Biological Diversity, Climate change, Energy Alternatives, Energy Conservation, Environmental Health, Environmental Literacy, Forests, General public, Guest Commentary, Higher Education, Interviews, Justice and Equity, Language arts, Marine/Aquatic Education, Mathematics, Non-formal, Outdoor education, Perspectives, Programs, Questioning strategies, Resources, Reviews, Schoolyard Classroom, Science, Secondary, Service learning, Social studies, Sustainability, Technology, restoration, salmon | Leave a Comment

BOCcd-romcoverCTR.inddThe discs have been burned, and the packaging has been assembled, and the first batch of CD-ROMs featuring “The Best of Clearing, Volume VI” have been mailed out!

If you haven’t seen the advertising on this website, or seen reference to this document before, you should check it out… the best articles, activities, and reviews from past issues of Clearing compiled and published together on a CD-ROM. “The Best of Clearing, Volume VI” is a way to get the best of back issues of Clearing at a very low price (even less than the previous cost of a one-year subscription!).

And just so you know, we’ll soon be republishing an earlier B.O.C — Volume V — which gathers even more great articles from the recent past (think Mike Weilbacher, Jim Martin, and others) in one convenient reference volume for your resource library.

If you’re interested in helping to keep Clearing alive, this is one way to do it. Buy a copy of Volume VI in CD-ROM and keep an eye out for Volume V when it comes available. Click on the “Best of Clearing” link on the nav bar above to buy your copy!

Mar

11

Winging Northward—A Shorebird’s Journey

Filed Under Activities, Biological Diversity, Climate change, Environmental Health, Schoolyard Classroom, Science | Leave a Comment

shorebirdmazatlanby Sandy Frost and Ben Swecker

For many people, a trip to Alaska is the dream of a lifetime. Yet cost and logistics keep many people away. In 2002, a group of dedicated educators joined forces to make such a visit— if only a ‘virtual’ visit—a reality for thousands of children across the Western Hemisphere. Blending good, old-fashioned interpretation and education know-how with technology, the Winging Northward—A Shorebird’s Journey distance-learning project brought the amazing resources of the Copper River Delta, Alaska to a diverse audience. This innovative and ambitious project developed over three years. The following article chronicles the miles traveled, and those yet to come, for this effort.

Jun

2

You are Brilliant and the Earth is hiring

Filed Under Climate change, Environmental Health, General public, Justice and Equity, Non-formal, Perspectives, Resources, Sustainability | Leave a Comment

paul_hawken.jpg

By Paul Hawken

From a commencement speech given at the University of Portland, May 3, 2009.

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there. Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

Read more

Feb

11

Global Issues – Global Opportunities: Population, Poverty, Consumption, Conflict, and the Environment

Filed Under Environmental Health, Justice and Equity, Programs, Social studies | Leave a Comment

by Gilda Wheeler

Abstract: This article discusses the important role of educators in helping students understand, connect to, and act on critical global issues facing us today and in the future. Global issues impact social, environmental, economic, health, and security concerns. Global issues are interconnected and hold the potential for far-reaching impacts on large numbers of people. What is important to remember as we explore global issues is that while they may be daunting, because of their interconnectedness they can provide us with opportunities to help create a sustainable world. By approaching global issues from a systems perspective we can help students create a world that represents their highest aspirations. It is up to each of us individually and as a community to make the choices and take the actions to create a future we want for ourselves and for future generations.

Introduction
The idea of issues that are truly global in scale is new to us. It emerged late in the 20th century, perhaps when humans first saw images of the Earth from space – a small blue-green planet devoid of boundaries and arbitrary political divisions. Regardless of their novelty, global issues are so important that they may literally determine the future of the human species. Global issues impact virtually all social, environmental, economic, health, and security concerns. And those concerns are, in themselves, global issues. Perhaps one of the most important roles that educators have today is helping our students understand global issues, see the connections to their own lives, and empower them to create a sustainable world.

Defining Global Issues
Since the study of global issues is relatively new there is not agreement as to how one defines a global issue. For the purpose of this presentation we will define global issues as follows. Global issues are those that have, or hold the potential for, far-reaching impacts on large numbers of people. Global issues are trans-national, or trans-boundary, in that they are beyond the capability of any one nation to resolve. Global issues are persistent or long acting in that they may take years, decades, or even generations to be fully felt, and may require similar time frames to be resolved. Finally, global issues are interconnected, which means that a change in one – whether for better or worse – exerts pressure for change in others.

Population
World population exceeded six billion in 1999 – doubling from three billion in 1960 – and is currently increasing by 80 to 85 million people each year. Depending upon the choices we make over the next few decades, demographers at the United Nations project world population in 2050 could be anywhere 7.3 billion to 10.7 billion. A number of factors drive this growth. At the most basic level, it is because far more people are born each year than die. Advances in nutrition and health care have increased survival rates and longevity for much of the world, and shifted the balance between births and deaths. Another is population “momentum”. Even though fertility rates have come down worldwide, there are many more people of childbearing age today than ever before. Roughly half the world’s population is under age 25, so as those three billion people start families over the next few decades, world population will likely increase by several billion. Another reason for continued high levels of population growth is that fertility rates remain relatively high in some populous regions like Africa and South Central Asia. Decisions about family size are often based on economic factors, and in poorer societies, having numerous children may be an important asset. They provide support and security in parents’ old age, help raise food, haul water, care for younger siblings, and gather fuel wood. Children may also work for wages outside the home, be indentured, or even sold to help support the family.

Consumption & Environment
One approach scientists are increasingly using to explore the issue of the Earth’s carrying capacity (the number of people the Earth can support over time) is through the concept of “ecological footprint” pioneered by Mathis Wackernagel and William Reese. The footprint model calculates the area of the Earth’s productive surface (land and sea) necessary to support a particular lifestyle or level of consumption. Through the ecological footprint lens we see that a person’s lifestyle has as much (or even more) of an impact on the planet than the mere numbers of people on the planet. By mapping the items of everyday items such as food, clothing and transportation, through Facing the Future’s activity Watch Where You Step, students begin to see what makes up their ecological footprint, and more importantly what they can do personally and what we can do collectively to reduce the total human footprint on the Earth.

Poverty, Scarcity, Impacts, and Sustainability
As we enter the 21st century, the gap between the world’s rich and poor is widening, both within and among countries. The United Nations identifies 2.8 billion people surviving on less than two dollars a day. Overall, the richest 20 percent of the world’s people control 86 percent of global income, while the poorest 20 percent control barely one percent.

The impacts of poverty, over consumption, and resource scarcity are varied. They include environmental destruction – richer nations and individuals can afford to over-consume resources, while poorer nations and individuals are often forced to over-exploit the environment just to survive. They include migration – people are forced to move in search of adequate resources. And they include conflict – wealthier nations and individuals fight to keep what they have, while those suffering a lack of resources fight to obtain them.

The solution this cycle of resource scarcity and poverty is to develop sustainable practices. We can help students understand the complexity and interconnectedness of scarcity and poverty through Facing the Future’s classroom simulation activity Fishing for the Future” in which students “fish” over several seasons. This activity also helps students understand the concept of sustainability as they over-fish their oceans and realize that they can “survive” and the resource base can be maintained by establishing sustainable fishing practices.

Linking Global Issues to Action
The good news is that we have the knowledge and tools today to help create a sustainable world. There are both personal and structural solutions that we can help our students identify and act on. On the personal level these include among many other things reducing our consumption, recycling, supporting sustainably developed products and food, considering our own family size, and engaging in the political process. On the structural level, as a nation we can help provide reproductive and community health care so people can make choices about their family size and be assured that they and their children will survive and be productive members of society. We can help alleviate poverty so people can support their families and aren’t forced to make decisions of “rational desperation” that may not be good for the environment. And finally we can develop new ways of measuring progress that take into account environmental and social impacts along with more traditional economic indicators.

We can help our students identify these solutions and begin the process of changing the way we think and act by using the lens of a system thinking process that recognizes the interconnectedness of all people and of all global problems. This perspective offers us a starting point; the only principle we can then follow is one of sustainability. The only “answer” is one that doesn’t create new problems but rather searches for underlying causes and their links across the spectrum of issues and finally rests on common ground.

We have the tools at our disposal to create a world that represents our highest aspirations. It’s up to each of us individually and as a community to make the choices and take the actions to create a future we want for ourselves and for future generations. To learn more about actions that educators and their students can do to make a positive impact in local communities and in the world, visit Facing the Future’s websites at www.facingthefuture.org.

References:
Facing the Future: People and the Planet. Curriculum Guide: Classroom Activities for Teaching about Global Issues and Solutions 2002

Facing the Future: People and the Planet. Facing the Future: Population, Poverty, Consumption and the Environment 2001

Population Reference Bureau website www.prb.org

Redefining Progress website, www.rprogress.org

United Nations Development Program website, www.undp.org

United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization website www.fao.org


Gilda Wheeler is currently the Program Supervisor for Environmental and Sustainability Education at the Washington State Office of the Superintendent of Public instruction (OSPI). She is responsible for supporting districts, schools, teachers, and students in implementing legislatively mandated environmental and sustainability education in Washington state.  This includes the development of integrated standards and assessment and professional development for classroom teachers and non-formal educators. Gilda also serves on a number of state and national boards and committees including co-chair of the E3 Washington K12/Teacher Education Sector steering committee, national K-12 Sector of the U.S. Partnership for Education for Sustainable Development and the Council of Chief State School Officers EdSteps Global Competency work group.