Wachstumshormone

Jun

20

Works in Progress: Making the most of your environmental education opportunities

Filed Under Activities, Perspectives, Resources | Leave a Comment

gutter activity outsideSneak up on them, and they’ll learn.
On their own.

By Jim Martin

How do you take care of all the background capacity building students need to make the most of environmental education field trips that they take during the school year? With tight school budgets and time that has to be reprogrammed to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind testing, place-based learning has become difficult for teachers to do. Here is a simple idea that saves valuable class time, engages students, and prepares them to understand the work they will do on field trips. Read more

Jun

17

Wild Words: A guide to integrating creative writing into field-based education

Filed Under Resources | Leave a Comment

IMG_1463

by Becca Deysach

“I’ve always wanted to write but never gave myself permission.”

This sentiment is the one I have heard most frequently since I began teaching creative writing several years ago.  I’ve heard it from my college students, patients at a mental health clinic, and empty-nesters who are finally letting themselves do whatever the heck they want.

The more I inquire about my students’ inhibitions about writing, the more I discover that people are afraid they have nothing to say, or, worse,  that they will fail terribly at saying what they want. I hear horror stories of returned papers that might as well have been dipped in red ink, and the resulting belief that they were, indeed, better off not trying.

But it’s not true: they are storytellers.  We all are. Some creative impulse lives in each of us—it’s part of being human, after all—and for some, the urge to paint or dance or write becomes so great that eventually it overpowers the limitations imposed by well intentioned teachers when they were young.  But then it shouldn’t get to that point.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
(enter password then hit return button on your keyboard for best results)

Becca Deysach teaches creative writing and environmental studies for Prescott College and Ibex Studios: Adventures in Creative Writing (www.ibexstudios.com).  She is excited to work with teachers in all disciplines to integrate creative writing into their curricula and can be reached at becca@ibexstudios.com.

Jun

3

Sustainability and Schools: Educating for Interconnection, Adaptability, and Resilience

Filed Under Resources | Leave a Comment

By Greg Smith

In my home state of Oregon it’s impossible to pick up the daily paper and not encounter some article that deals with concerns about environmental or social sustainability.  With climate change, dramatically increasing energy costs, economic instability, and growing worries about the availability and cost of food, journalists and the public are at last paying attention to issues that for decades were pushed to the margins of the nation’s collective consciousness.

This shift in public awareness has yet to have much impact on American schools where a preoccupation with testing remains the central concern of the day.  This should not surprise us.  Education tends to follow social trends rather than initiate them.  Given the rapidity with which changes are occurring in the environment and the economy, however, schools may need to take a more active role in preparing young people to address challenges posed by a warmer and oil-strapped world.  All of our futures could well depend on their capacity to respond to these new conditions with intelligence and a spirit of generosity and compassion.

Fortunately, some educators are now adopting teaching approaches that promise to help young people grapple with the dilemmas of civic involvement and problem solving.  Few teachers explicitly address climate change, rising fuel prices, or food shortages head-on; what they do instead is create learning experiences that engage students in community issues while preparing them to become actors more than consumers or victims.  I believe that these educators are laying the foundations of an education for sustainability and equity.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
(enter password then hit return button on your keyboard for best results)

This article was reprinted in its entirety from the website of the Journal of Sustainability Education http://www.journalofsustainabilityeducation.org/

Jun

2

Storytelling in Science Education

Filed Under Science | Leave a Comment

by Brian “Fox” Ellis

I learned early on that storytelling is one of the most important tools for teaching science. If you think about it . . . what is science? Science is an attempt to understand the universe.

A well-told science story does three important jobs: It brings facts to life; it makes abstract concepts concrete; and through the virtual reality of storytelling, it walks listeners through the process of scientific inquiry.

Children are curious about information and science facts if they’re presented in an intriguing way. Historically, teaching science education meant spending an inordinate amount of time memorizing facts. Facts are important, and storytelling is one of the most effective ways of delivering them. But if you stop with facts you are not teaching science. Science is a verb, an activity, not simply a body of knowledge.

Ideas such as the food web, evolution, the water cycle, and animal adaptation are examples of the “big picture” ideas that are critical to understanding modern science. But if you stop with concepts, you still are not teaching science. You are building a necessary conceptual framework for ordering and understanding facts. Again, science is something you do, a way of asking questions and seeking answers.

Storytelling can be used to introduce or implement all of the science standards. Though it is obviously a prime example of language arts and science communication skills, I often include mathematics problems in the science stories to emphasize the importance of mathematics in science education.

Science-process skills are the methods or strategies that scientists employ to discover and understand the story of the universe. A good story involves the listener in many of the strategies of gathering the facts of the story, making predictions about the outcome, and checking their hypothesis against the unfolding details of the tale. Also, you can use a story to make abstract concepts personal and tangible. Important facts can be conveyed within a dynamic context so the facts stick; they have more meaning and impact

Let me share a short story that will show you what I mean.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
(enter password then hit return button on your keyboard for best results)

Jun

2

Dying is Easy: Comedy in Environmental Education

Filed Under Perspectives, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment

by Eric J. Fitch, Ph.D.

Abstract: In the contest of ideas, environmental educators put themselves at disadvantage  by not availing themselves of the tools of humor. From satire to ridicule to comedy, the  ability to connect through humor shouldn’t be overlooked. Humor has often been looked  down upon by environmental professionals. Many environmental scientists, advocates,  and educators view “Environment” so seriously that “having fun” with it would be  “inappropriate”. This puts educators of all stripes at a disadvantage. Opponents of  environmental education regularly use ridicule and satire to degrade the message and  demean the messengers. Environmental professionals are often portrayed as purveyors of  “gloom and doom” and their pronouncements the ranting of Cassandras. These comments  often come clothed in mean spirited jest. Willingness to take up the tools of humor  simply means leveling the playing field. This paper addresses how humor can inform;  approach serious subjects humorously, and can be incorporated into different  environmental education forums.

There’s a story that goes back at least until the early 1980s. It is a take off on the  biblical story of Creation. It is usually titled something like “God and the EPA” or “God  and the Environmentalists”. Instead of God being able to create the known universe at  will and on His timetable, He finds himself stymied at every turn by the requirements and  concerns of various Heavenly bureaucratic agencies and angelic environmental interest groups. When it becomes apparent that impact assessment, public comment and review,  and many of the other things we take for granted as normal in the environmental  community are going to stand in His way, God creates Hell. Although it is a funny piece  and sure to draw a laugh from a great range of audiences, environmental audiences often  miss the underlying message: that processes and protocols that lie near and dear to our  heart and are looked at as good, right, just and even dare I say Holy, are infuriating to  others in society. In subtle ways, environmental angelic surrogates in the Heavenly Host  are subtly mocked and presented as a bit “fuzzy”. The story brings to light a very  important point that is often overlooked; those who control the discourse most often  control the outcomes.

ALERT: You need to be a CLEARING subscriber to read the rest of this article.
(enter password then hit return button on your keyboard for best results)