ne of my favorite nature quotations comes from the Japanese conservationist Tanaka Shozu who said, “The question of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.”

I wanted to touch the hearts of my middle school students with the beauty of nature as well as inspire them to take care of the local environment. I found the perfect spot for a nature experience less than an hour away from our school campus in the Sierra Nevada.

First stop was a shady woodland nature trail. The path twisted and turned as it followed Rock Creek through the pines, oaks, and big leaf maples. I had the students spread out along the trail, leaving about 10-12 feet between one another. They sat in silence for 10 minutes (a long time for some 13-year-olds!) and then wrote a one sentence description of their surroundings. Some wrote about what they saw—green leaves, sparkling sunlight, giant trees reaching into the sky. Others wrote about what they heard—singing birds, and the bubbling creek rushing over rocks, while others focused on how they felt—peaceful, quiet, and calm.

I collected the papers, and we took a short hike to totally different part of the forest—an area that had been recently clearcut of all trees. Tree stumps dotted a barren hillside. Without a canopy of leaves providing shade, the sun blazed down on us. Once again I had the kids spread out, sit by themselves, and write one sentence about the area. Words like desolate, destroyed, dead, sad, emptiness filled their papers.

Gathering in a circle, I collected these papers and read them aloud as if each sentence was a line in a poem. Then I read aloud the “poem” they had written from the nature trail. What a stark contrast in words and feelings!

I didn’t need to give a lecture on the importance of taking care of the forest. The kids “got it” through their direct experience in nature. Their hearts were touched. Their minds were opened. Back in the classroom we explored the hows and whys of forest management, but nothing they learned from our studies came close to having the impact of their personal experience. Experience truly is the BEST teacher.

I was fortunate in that I was able to arrange an all-day field trip. But you can create a high-impact nature experience without traveling far—just step outside the classroom door and try out one of these ideas:

Suggestions from Earth Heroes: Champions of the Wilderness:

• Play “Ten Treasures” by going on a walk around the school grounds and finding ten different plants, insects, birds, or other critters. Use field guides to identify the treasures. This is a great team activity.
• Have each student choose a nearby tree and visit it weekly. Encourage the student to get to know “their” tree in a variety of ways: making bark rubbings, creating a collage of leaves, measuring their tree’s circumference, calculating it’s height, or writing a detailed description of their tree and asking someone find it.
• Place pieces of scrap wood on bare dirt or under bushes around the school. Wait two days and have students work in small groups to lift the boards and count the creatures they find hiding there. Use field guides to identify them.

Play the outdoor game “I am aware of…” from a Teacher’s Guide for How We Know What We Know about Our Changing Climate:

• Divide the class into small groups of 5-8 students. Go outside and have groups form into a circle.
• Going around the circle, each person completes the sentence “I am aware of…” by saying a word or phrase about something they see, hear, smell, or feel. For example, “I am aware of the sunlight sparkling on the pine needles of the tree.” “I am aware of the wind blowing across the grass.” “I am aware of how hot the sun is on my shoulders.” Students continue for several times around the circle. As each student takes a turn, the others pause for a moment to become more aware of what was just mentioned.
• Encourage students to stretch their powers of observation by using all of your senses. To keep everyone’s attention focused, students do not talk unless it’s their turn.
• After playing the game for several minutes, ask each student to choose one of the objects they observed and work independently to write 10 or more descriptive words or phrases about it. If there’s time, they can also sketch their object. When back in the classroom, have students share their descriptions and sketches.

Birds are everywhere. Just look up! Practice these birding tips from The BLUES Go Birding Across America:

• Use binoculars to help you see birds more clearly.
• Observe a bird’s size, shape, and color.
• A field guide’s pictures and descriptions can help you lean about the birds you see.
• The best time to see birds is when they are most active. That’s usually when they are eating.
• Listen to birds’ calls and songs.
• Male birds may be easier to identify than females because they are often brightly colored.
• Don’t disturb birds by getting too close, especially if they have babies.
• Attract birds to the area by putting up a bird feeder and birdbath.

Also I recommend that you look at Sharing Nature with Children and Sharing Nature with Children II by Joseph Cornell. Both of these pioneering books have well-proven activities designed to awaken the enthusiasm of children for nature, focus their attention on some aspect and to experience it directly, as well as to share their inspiration with others.

As an educator for more than 20 years, Carol L. Malnor taught elementary, junior high and high school. She helped found two alternative high schools and created specialty educational programs. She is now a writer. Her books include The BLUES Go Birding Series and Earth Heroes: Champions of the Wilderness and Earth Heroes: Champions of Wild Animals as well as numerous Teacher’s Guides to books published by Dawn Publications. She is also co-author of Molly’s Organic Farm available March, 2012.

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Having an environmental literacy plan in place will position Oregon to be eligible for pending funds through federal No Child Left Inside legislation which is gaining ground daily.  As part of the Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan, the Task Force is charged with several tasks, including preparing students to understand and address the major environmental challenges facing Oregon and the United States; help establish programs that promote healthy lifestyles through outdoor recreation and sound nutrition; and create professional development opportunities for teachers to improve their knowledge of environmental issues and skills in teaching about environmental issues.

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from Callister, Jamogochian, Lemos, Weddle, & Yoder (2010) – Community-based Education: Model Programs. Northwest Center for Sustainable Resources.

http://www.ncsr.org/materials/index.html

This top-ten list of advice from Jon Yoder may be of assistance for teachers just beginning to integrate environmental literacy into their classroom:

1. Start small and find other teachers interested in doing a community project. Support and collaboration are critical for success as you begin this work.
2. Don’t let issues such as transportation and funding stand in your way. Be creative and persistent and employ the resources of your community.
3. Getting to know community partners is a must, so be prepared to make calls and meet with potential partners. They are often more than willing to work with you and may have resources you can use.
4. Make sure that your class does not become a work crew. The work you do should be the work of your partner. This is not a field trip or guest presentation, but joining the authentic work of your partner.
5. Be organized and plan ahead. You can never foresee all possibilities, but being organized helps you become more successful with students and partners.
6. Promote the program. It is not about you but about the students and their capacity to serve as a resource for their community
7. Involve students in the selection of their work and in designing their products. This may be the first time they have some control over their learning. It can be empowering for them.
8. As your work expands, think of ways that the program can sustain itself when you are no longer there.
9. Do not worry about having to know the content or being in charge of direct instruction. You will become a facilitator and instruction comes from the community partner and the curriculum resources you organize. One of the great joys of this approach is that you often get to learn along with your students. Sometimes they can even teach you. The teacher is no longer the “sage on the stage,” but instead is the “guide on the side.”
10. Remember it is about community! The work students do needs to have a context to it. They should come out of their study with a clear understanding of what their community is, how it can function, and possible roles for them to participate. Do not forget that this approach also fosters community building within the classroom and students become reconnected to themselves and to each other.

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The West Coast Governors’ Agreement on Ocean Health

The ocean plays a critical role in maintaining ecosystems and is essential to our health and wellbeing. Its diversity of resources belong to all of us. Yet, only 1 in 10 Americans understand ocean systems or the threats these systems are facing. It is critical to educate and promote stewardship among our students and the public- at-large in order to restore a healthy, productive and resilient ocean.

Recently, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Pew Oceans Commission reported on the status of the ocean, acknowledging that improved coordination among governing bodies is needed, and that oceans should be managed on an ecosystem level. We need look no further than our own offshore system, the California Current, as illustration. It moves south along the western coast of North America transcending political boundaries, while at the same time, sustaining marine wildlife populations, regulating climate, and providing a myriad of other ecosystem services relied on by our states, the nation, and the world.

The California Current and surrounding waters provide Washington, Oregon, and California with a rich bounty of resources — resources that are, unfortunately, in serious trouble. Polluted waters, declining populations of fish and other marine life, degraded near-shore habitats, risk of severe storms and tsunamis, and impacts related to climate change are but a few examples. To address these critical issues, the Governors of these three states have launched a proactive, regional collaboration to protect and manage resources along the entire West Coast.

In September 2006, the West Coast Governors’ Agreement (WCGA) on Ocean Health was signed. Since then, these three states have worked together and consulted with federal agency leads and stakeholders on appropriate actions to improve the health of our ocean and coastal resources. The final action plan includes specific steps for addressing the following key priority areas: clean coastal waters and beaches; healthy ocean and coastal habitats; effective ecosystem-based management; reduced impacts of offshore development; increased ocean awareness and literacy among the region’s citizens; expanded ocean and coastal scientific information, research, and monitoring; and sustainable economic development of coastal communities. To improve regional coordination between the three states, Action-Coordination Teams (ACTs) were established — one for each of the priority areas. To date, each of the ACTs have developed draft work plans, which have been released for public comment (June 2009). Final work plans, incorporating public comments, are currently being released.

Priority Area 5 of the WCGA Action Plan aims to “increase ocean awareness and literacy among citizens.” The specific actions are: to integrate ocean science and conservation into expanded environmental education curricula by encouraging changes to education content standards enhancing ocean literacy (Action 5.1), and to support ocean awareness efforts for the public and for decision-makers at all levels, and encourage improvement and expansion of self-directed learning institutions and volunteer programs (Action 5.2). To achieve these goals, change needs to occur in all aspects and levels of the education process, and all of the relevant stakeholders – students, teachers, informal educators, parents, administrators, community members and others – need to be engaged.

Action 5.1

When the National Science Education Standards were re- leased in 1996, there was little mention of ocean topics. As a result, most state content standards do not include much about the ocean, coasts, or watersheds. Consequently, there is little teaching of these topics in most K-12 classrooms. Without a coherent framework of concepts and messages, these important topics remain on the margins of teaching and science learning. It is essential that states like Washington, Oregon, and California systematically incorporate marine science into curriculum. The Ocean Awareness and Literacy ACT plans to assist educators in integrating ocean literacy principles and concepts into their classrooms and programs by providing guidance on the tools and existing resources that help achieve mastery of state science and other content standards.

Action 5.2

Outside of the classroom, an increase in public knowledge and understanding of marine science and issues is also critical to engage individuals to become better stewards of the environment. By establishing an integrated network of information, people, and resources, everyone, from the public to policy-makers will be better able to make in- formed environmental decisions. The Ocean Awareness and Literacy ACT plans to utilize online technology to raise awareness of and improve access to Web resources. Additionally, they will make available physical products such as exhibit materials and toolkits for various audiences that illustrate essential ocean and coastal issues and processes and demonstrate why this information is important in daily lives. Messages developed will focus on the California Current and other ocean and coastal topics common to the three states. Decision-makers, the public, educators and students, government agencies, and non-profit and volunteer organizations will benefit from the resources and information developed.

As one might expect, funding is the primary constraint to accomplishing these tasks. While the WCGA Executive Team works to find money for these projects, the ACT members continue to make progress on implementing the work plans using current resources and/or through lever- aging efforts with similar, external activities.

Immediate, meaningful actions can be taken — at all levels — to help restore and maintain the health of our oceans. You can:

- Contribute ideas, resources, funding opportunities, etc. to support our efforts.

- Complete an upcoming survey that assesses ocean literacy needs and encourage others to complete the survey.

- Share your favorite lesson plans and ocean-related resources for inclusion in the broader WCGA materials.

- Expand your educational efforts to address issues of regional significance.

- Engage decision-makers on significant regional ocean and coastal issues that warrant their attention and support.

- Familiarize yourself with the Ocean Literacy Principles and the newly introduced Scope and Sequence Conceptual Flow Diagrams (CFDs) – one for each of the 4 grade bands for each of the 7 Essential Principles. They can be found at http://www.oceanliteracy.net/usa/ocean_science_literacy/scope_and_sequence/ home.html.

- Integrate the Ocean Literacy Principles and CFDs into your educational programming.

- Encourage your colleagues to participate in professional development opportunities to learn ocean science concepts, skills and related pedagogy.

- Periodically check the WCGA Website for more information as implementation efforts move forward — http://westcoastoceans.gov/.

For more information, contact Nancee Hunter, Co-Chair of the West Coast Governors’ Agreement Ocean Literacy Action Coordination Team — nancee.hunter@oregonstate.edu.

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My primary goal as an educator at the Environmental Science School is to create connections between students and nature. I do this because I believe once students have a deep connection to nature, they become advocates, often for the rest of their life. We have lots of time and experiences with nature as part of our program.

An example. We spent several trips a few years ago along a certain creek watching, counting and learning about salmon. We watched a female dig a redd (her nest) and the whole cycle. Every time we went back the kids looked for red girl, as they had named her. During one rainy day the kids noticed a pipe dumping gunky water into OUR stream onto OUR fish. They were outraged. We followed the pipe back and discovered it was a street drain, full of crud and oil from cars off the road. I did not tell them how to feel or act, they did that on their own, based on their connection to that place. After school they  ALL met and cleaned up that whole street, then, unknown to me, a bunch of them went to an evening political debate between a couple of candidates for mayor. They stood up in a room full of adults, and demanded to know what the candidates were going to do about the street drains in our town which dump oil and gunk onto OUR salmon stream. They were articulate, bright and passionate advocates.

As far as I am concerned, this is why I teach.

Rob Sandelin is a naturalist and environmental educator who has since childhood spent much of his life observing and studying nature in the mountains of the Northwest. He has served as a park naturalist at Yosemite National Park, Olympic National Park, and Denali National Park. Currently he teaches field skills to student naturalists at the Environmental Education School of the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. He is the author of This Week in the Woods, a series of natural history essays; the Cohousing Resource Guide; and the Intentional Communities Resource Pages website. He lives with family and friends in the Sharingwood Cohousing Community in Snohomish County.

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Using the local community as a starting point for teaching interdisciplinary concepts and connecting students to the real world.

By Kim Stokely

Sixteen years ago, after attending a workshop on science teaching, I was driving home over a mountain pass when I stopped and looked out over the mountain valley. I thought, “Look at this science classroom! “Why isn’t this dynamic, inspiring world being used more for educating our children?” I went on to think, “Wouldn’t it be possible to connect our learning to something real, something tangible, something meaningful? What is the physical place that is common to all of us, defines a community, and binds us together? A watershed. Might we be able to connect learning to this? Could our watersheds be a container or focus for all our learning? Could we actually practice caring for a piece of land together?” Surprisingly, similar thinking, focusing on local landscapes and communities, was awakening or reawakening all over the globe, and from it emerged the practice of Place-Based Learning.

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Kim Stokely is the Education Director for Adopt-a-Watershed in Hayfork, California. She can be reached at (530) 628-5334 or via e-mail at kim@adopt-a-watershed.org.

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by Mike Weilbacher

With the new wave of interest in the environment, will we finally give students the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens?

In just a few weeks, high school seniors all around the United States will walk proudly across stages, hoisting their diplomas as they graduate from formal K–12 education. As their teachers, we’ll look on with some wistfulness, for the world into which they are graduating—one of spiraling financial crises coupled with huge international challenges—is vastly different from the one in which they started their senior year only 10 months ago.

But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you’ll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world’s population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.

Will our graduates be ready for these new realities? Will they confidently stride into this world as college students, workers, voters, consumers—in short, as competent, caring adults capable of making good decisions on the pressing issues of the day?

Environmental Ignorance

Forty years ago, in the first issue of the Journal of Environmental Education, William B. Stapp (1969) defined the goal of the nascent field of environmental education as producing a citizenry that “is knowledgeable concerning the biophysical environment and its associated problems, aware of how to help solve these problems, and motivated to work toward their solution” (p. 30).

Today, a new U.S. president actively seeks approval from the American people for repairing the economic collapse while preventing the ecological one. There will be fierce pressure on President Obama to forego environmental projects in lieu of economic ones. Have the past 40 years of environmental education met Stapp’s challenge and created the environmentally literate citizenry we need to negotiate the coming trade-offs?

In a word, no.

A typical high school student is aware of environmental issues, has discussed and debated climate change or rain forest loss in some class sometime, and might have bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions. But do our students know where the trash goes when it leaves their house? The leading source of greenhouse gas emissions? Why we recycle? (Glass and aluminum, after all, are not rare resources.) If you ask a group of students what we can do to combat the warming trend, several will chime in that we need to remove chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from hair spray. (Many high schoolers conflate global warming with ozone depletion and haven’t been told that CFCs were removed from the market 20 years ago.)

My organization surveyed high school students on these questions and more and discovered that although students are overwhelmingly “pro-environment,” they possess remarkably little information about breaking environmental issues. One small example: We asked them to name one bird they can identify by song. The leading answer? None. If local birds disappear from the landscape because of extinction, or arrive three weeks late because of warming climates, it’s possible that no one will notice.

Oh, there are numerous bright spots in the environmental education movement, but progress is hardly keeping up with the increasingly urgent issues that face us today. When Stapp coined his definition four decades ago, the United States was riding a wave of interest in the environment triggered by the Santa Barbara oil spill, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, Lake Erie being declared biologically dead, and charismatic birds like eagles and peregrine falcons vanishing. As we addressed these issues, the wave crested, and interest in ecology quickly ebbed.

Today, even though an interest in green ideas is resurging, the issues are far more global, complex, and intertwined with politics. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels currently exceed 385 parts per million, almost 40 percent higher than pre–Industrial Revolution levels, and they are rising every year. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean is changing dramatically as the Arctic warms more quickly than anyone expected, and our graduates may see an ice-free polar cap in the summer in their lifetimes.

An International Union for the Conservation of Nature report (2008) noted that one in four of the world’s mammals are at risk of extinction from habitat loss, poaching, and climate change. Many critically important rivers—such as the Nile, the Yellow, and the Colorado—no longer empty water into the sea. Mountains of discarded cell phones and computers make their way to destitute Chinese villages, where they are picked apart for valuable metals, exposing the villagers to high concentrations of incredibly toxic materials.

To address today’s geopolitically entangled world of large, complex eco-issues, students simply have to know more than they did 40 years ago.

What’s the Problem?

Four issues have become huge obstacles to environmental literacy. First, students are extraordinarily disconnected from the environment. Richard Louv’s revelatory 2005 book Last Child in the Woods called attention to a world of children rapidly retreating from outdoor play and time spent in nature. Instead, modern kids stay indoors, “’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are,” as one 4th grader famously said (p. 10).

Viewing screens has become a child’s full-time job. Kids are plugged in 24/7, watching an average of 25 hours of TV a week (Gentile & Walsh, 2002) and then logging additional screen time on the Internet, browsing the Web, playing video games, and engaging in whole new verbs, like IMing and Facebooking. Louv coined the phrase nature-deficit disorder to describe the “human costs of alienation from nature” (p. 34), including diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illness. Just when students need contact with nature more than ever, they have abandoned it.

Second, ask any environmental educator and he or she will bemoan No Child Left Behind, whose pressures have caused many schools to trade outdoor field trips for test prep. Science teachers routinely eliminate such concepts as environmental education, which do not appear to relate directly to questions on the tests. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Web site (2009) bluntly states, “No Child Left Behind is contributing to an increasing environmental literacy gap by reducing the amount of environmental education taking place in K–12 classrooms.”

Third, students’ exposure to environmental education depends on the luck of the draw and the amalgam of the interests of whichever teachers they happen to have throughout their school career. In my daughters’ school, there were two 5th grade teachers, one contagiously obsessed with birds and birdwatching and the other in love with Broadway musicals. One class went on an all-day birding trip; the other performed a play for the entire school. Both are equally interesting and important activities, but why didn’t the two cross-pollinate and give all 5th graders equal access to both? My daughters caught the birding bug, but one-half of the 5th grade never saw a nesting piping plover.

And finally, the downside of the large nonprofit universe of environmental education facilities—zoos, museums, aquariums, nature centers, parks, arboretums, children’s gardens—is that schools approach environmental education like a Chinese menu. They pick a field trip from column A and a lesson plan from column B; toss in an occasional Earth Day assembly, litter pickup, and letter to the president; and assume that their charges are now environmentally literate. And the nonprofits, wanting students to return the following year, emphasize fun over content, immersing the students in activity-based education that is designed to serve as an appetizer for environmental literacy but ends up becoming the main course. They often retreat from tough concepts like water shortages and stay with politically lighter ones like the water cycle.

The upshot? Even though there are more centers for environmental education and more college degree programs in environment-related fields than ever, and even though building green schools has suddenly emerged as an important idea (pre-economic meltdown), we are perhaps even farther from environmental literacy than we were in 1969.

Students are graduating from our schools thinking that green is good. But we haven’t given them the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens.

New Research May Turn the Tide

Fortunately, several important research efforts are threading their way through the education system. For example, the Children and Nature Network, a Web-based organization (www.childrenandnature.org) that reports a wide variety of data and activities related to repairing the nature deficit disorder, showcases data illuminating the educational benefits of immersing students in the outdoors and environmental education experiences. And there’s tons of data.

The American Institutes for Research (2005) studied the effects of weeklong residential outdoor education programs in which most of the participants were at-risk youth. Comparing students who experienced the outdoor education program with those in a control group who had not had the experience, the researchers found a 27 percent increase in measured mastery of science concepts, plus enhanced cooperation and conflict-resolution skills, higher self-esteem, and gains in problem solving, motivation, and classroom behavior.

A Canadian study found that children whose school grounds include diverse natural settings are more physically active, more aware of nutrition, more civil to one another, and more creative (Bell & Dyment, 2006). Another study discovered that children playing in green settings have reduced symptoms of attention deficit disorder (Taylor, Kuo, & Sullivan, 2001).

The more studies are published, the more they agree: Exposure to nature raises test scores; increases creativity, cooperation, and self-confidence; reduces stress; and enhances cognitive abilities.

Promising Models

When the next wave of environmental interest washes over our schools, as it inevitably will, this body of research will support the new ideas for truly fulfilling Stapp’s dream of environmental literacy. Here are a few intriguing efforts now underway.

No Child Left Inside

In response to Louv’s book, more than 1,000 nonprofits with almost 50 million members have launched a variety of efforts loosely organized under the title “No Child Left Inside.” For instance, the National Audubon Society has pledged to place a family-oriented nature center in every congressional district. Connecticut governor M. Jodi Rell launched a special Web site (www.nochildleftinside.org) promoting state parks, an idea copied by many other states. And the U.S. Congress has considered a No Child Left Inside act that would provide federal funding for environmental literacy plans and for state efforts to train teachers in model environmental education programming, including outdoor learning. In the last session, the act passed the House, and supporters are eager to try again in the new Congress.

Green Charter Schools

For better or worse, the charter school movement has been sweeping across the United States in the last decade. A growing number of charter schools have been designed around the simple premise that the entire science curriculum can be taught through environmental education.

The Green Woods Charter School in Philadelphia is located on the campus of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, a 340-acre living laboratory of forests and fields, streams and ponds. The center’s naturalists are integrated into the science faculty of the school, and the students spend quality time immersed in the woods.

Wisconsin’s River Crossing Environmental Charter School, located in a one-room schoolhouse, provides a hands-on curriculum with subjects integrated through environmental studies. Students in 7th and 8th grade participate weekly in field trips and real-world ecosystem restoration projects, such as restoring the prairie and building rain gardens for storm water.

Other sites include California’s Environmental Charter High School, Connecticut’s Common Ground High School, and Florida’s Academy of Environmental Sciences. A Green Charter Schools Network (www.greencharterschools.org) has formed to assist teachers and staff. Sadly, precious few students are fortunate enough to attend these schools.

Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning

Another innovation that has grown in popularity in the last decade is the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning movement, a cumbersome name for a simple concept. In place of the rigorously scheduled school day of science, English, and gym periods, these programs use the environment and the outdoors as the centerpiece of students’ curriculum. This format breaks down barriers between disciplines, stresses team building and individualized learning, and involves students in real-world community issues.

In suburban Philadelphia, for example, the pioneering Watershed program at Radnor Middle School engages students in outdoor field studies all year, including stream testing, canoeing, trout rearing and release, and more. Students in the program spend all day together, except for math and foreign language classes, in which they are integrated with the rest of the school. Students hone their communication skills at conferences and youth summits.

One analysis of 40 Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning programs (Lieberman & Hoody, 1998) discovered that students in these programs outscored their peers on standardized tests, had better grades, and acted more independently and responsibly. At one school using this approach, reports to the principal’s office declined 91 percent in the three-year study period.

Wood Kindergartens

A rather radical movement has leapt across the pond from Europe and, coupled with Richard Louv’s work, has begun making inroads in the United States. In the Wood School model, child care workers and youngsters ages 3–6 spend the entire day outdoors in nature. The program is held outdoors in all seasons, although the group moves indoors in extreme weather. Proponents of this process assert that playing outside for prolonged periods strengthens the students’ immune systems and improves development of manual dexterity, physical coordination, tactile sensitivity, and depth perception.

Here in the United States, many nature centers, such as the Chippewa Nature Center in Midland, Michigan, have begun opening variants of Wood Kindergartens, versions that might not strictly adhere to the European’s outdoor component but still allow the students full and frequent access to natural areas and nature-based play (Reynolds, 2007).

Greening of the Culture

U.S. schools teach what American culture considers important. Once society decided that computer literacy was central to a solid education, computer classes invaded schools at warp speed, and the “digital divide” became an important and contentious issue.

As environmental issues heat up (pardon the pun), the culture is coming to consensus—again—on the importance of the environment. Green cable channels, green Web sites, eco-chic clothing, green roofs on green buildings, and innumerable products made from recycled objects are beginning to infuse the culture with a newfound interest in sustainability—an interest that ideally will create a ground swell of support for environmental improvement.

But the four horsemen of the global apocalypse—warming, species loss, water scarcity, and population growth—are bearing down on us, and many environmentalists worry about a vanishing window of opportunity for addressing these issues. Science fiction writer H. G. Wells was prophetic when he wrote in 1920 that “human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

Environmental literacy is one race that education must win.

What Every Student Should Know About the Environment

There are scores of possible models of environmental education programs, and most have many of the following large concepts in common. As students go from kindergarten through high school, they can work their way down the list.

1. Earth overflows with life.
One of science’s biggest mysteries is how many species share this planet— estimates range from 5 million to 100 million species. Many environmental education programs begin with the premise that life is vanishing; young learners should first know that Earth teems with a huge number of creatures.

2. Each creature is uniquely adapted to its environment.
Every species evolved to possess a unique set of adaptations that enables it to survive and thrive in its ecosystem. Students should be on a first-name basis with many local creatures.

3. The web of life is interdependent.
Organisms evolve complex relationships, each depending on numerous other species for their survival.

4. Materials flow through ecosystems in cycles.
All creatures need water, air, and nutrients to survive. These materials cycle and recycle through ecosystems. The water we drink today is the same water we’ve always had, and always will.

5. The sun is the ultimate source of energy flowing through ecosystems.
Food grows from sunlight energy; our houses are heated by fossil fuels created many millennia ago from ancient sunlight.

6. There is no waste in nature; everything is recycled.
In nature, every waste product is used by other creatures. Humans have bent those circles into straight lines, where things are used once and tossed.

7. We consume resources to live.
Every student should know where the trash truck takes the trash, where water comes from, and how the nearest power plant makes electricity.

8. Conservation is the wise use of finite resources.
We are physical creatures with real needs—to eat, drink, build houses, write on paper. But how do we use these resources sustainably?

9. Humans can have a profound effect on environmental systems.
Fossil fuels pump carbon dioxide into the sky; habitat loss is causing the extinction of large numbers of species. Our actions profoundly affect the ecological systems that sustain living things—and us. Nature can often repair these systems (forests grow back, for example); but humans are changing systems faster than nature can adapt.

10. Each of us can powerfully affect the fate of the natural world.
Because each of us is directly plugged into the planet, the actions we take—or fail to take—profoundly influence earth’s systems.

Mike Weilbacher is Director of the nonprofit Lower Merion Conservancy in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania. He travels the United States as an environmental educator, performer, and workshop presenter. E-mail: mike@dragonfly.org; Web site: www.mikeweilbacher.com; Blog: www.mikeweilbacher.blogspot.com.

References

American Institutes for Research. (2005). Effects of outdoor education programs for children in California. Palo Alto, CA: Author.

Bell, A. C., & Dyment, J. E. (2006). Grounds for action: Promoting physical activity through school ground greening in Canada. Toronto: Evergreen.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation. (2009). What has NCLB done to environmental education? [Online]. Annapolis, MD: Author. Available: www.cbf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=act_sub_actioncenter_federal_nclb_done

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Reviewed by Fletcher Brown

Over the last two decades the educational reform movement has been pitching a variety of methodologies to get educators to be more student-centered and inquiry minded. Curriculum and textbooks have been slowly adapting, most often offering supplements to existing materials that incorporate these methods and approaches. Eco-Inquiry: A Guide to Ecological Learning Experiences for Upper Elementary/Middle Grades is one of the few guides that truly incorporates these reform measures beautifully embedding inquiry teaching strategies and alternative assessment measures into the activities.

Eco-Inquiry in composed of three ecology modules for upper elementary or middle grades. The modules last from four to seven weeks and examine food webs, decomposition, and nutrient cycling. Important features in this guide include:
• Each module organizes students’ inquiries around a real-world problem or challenge.
• Students form research teams that do peer reviews, share ideas and findings.
• The focus of the activities are on the local schoolyard or neighborhood environment.
• Both the staff and students use a variety of alternative assessment measures.
• Units address student misconceptions about ecology through learning concepts using a learning cycle approach.
• The guide includes extensive background information for teachers about schoolyard habitats and the flora and fauna found in them.

Upon opening the book you will immediately identify that this is not like most other curriculum guides. The introduction sets the stage for things to come making sure the teachers understand that their role is one of a collaborator who will be involved in a classroom that they call a ìcollaboratoryî.  To create this colaboratory learning environment they structure each module around an inquiry approach to learning. Each module has four sections; activating ideas, investigations, processing understanding, and applying/assessing. Embedded in these four sections lie seven to ten lessons which have embedded in them four central learning processes; building a framework, developing knowledge, inquiring, and applying.

Central to the guide is the current of building a community of inquiry minds. This is accomplished in the curriculum through the use of student writing that they hope will promote interaction and reflection. Most of the writing is accomplished through journaling, which is a major part of what students do on a daily basis while being involved in the modules. A variety of different types of journaling formats are used including reflections, quick writes, learning logs, and persuasive writing to name a few. One particularly interesting journal format that they implement which models current communication patterns in the science world is the use of what they term ìC-mailî. Here students are able to send notes to friends using set formats to quickly communicate ideas and thoughts. Be it C-mail or other journaling formats students are expected to be writing on a daily bases aimed at sharing their thoughts, ideas, and impressions about what they learn and observe.

There are two additional pieces to the guide that make it shine among other ecology curriculum guides. The first are the activities they have selected for the students to use. Each module has a variety of hands-on and minds-on activities that are based on studentsí misconceptions in ecology. A good example of this is a unit entitled, A Challenge to GROW. Here students begin by examining prior ideas about what plants need to grow.  This is followed by students observing soil samples, talking about where soil nutrients come from, they receive a letter from a company that wants to know if dead plants can be used as fertilizer and end with the development of research questions that lead extended study projects. The modules are clearly multi-faceted keeping students engaged and busy. While they have given structure to the activities to help guide students and teachers, there is also flexibility for students to go their own direction with investigations.

The second area that is done exceptionally well is assessment. Throughout the guide students are asked to reflect on their learning and relate what they learn to the real world. The main vehicle for studentsí summative assessment is the portfolio. Here students select samples of their work after each module and turn in an end of the year final portfolio project that is formally graded. Individual assignments, whether they are part of the portfolio or not, are assessed using a set of proficiency standards.

Indicators used in the proficiency standards include; novice, proficient, proficient +, and advanced. Be it a journal product, concept map, or experimental write-up, one of the proficiency standards are applied to student work. For the teacher guidance and examples are given so first time user of alternative assessment measures feels more comfortable and confident in using them. Whether it is journaling, concept mapping or portfolios the assessment is an integral part of the modules.  By choosing to do the modules you will have to use the assessment measures. They cannot be easily separated.

One thing that Eco-Inquiry is not is a complete curriculum for all content included in middle and high school ecology classes. The authors have chosen to take a few main ideas and go in-depth in these areas. If you are looking to cover all the major concepts in ecology using this guide you will not succeed. What this curriculum guide does is develop in-depth learning, communication skills, and inquiry learning skills through the science topics of food webs, cycles and decomposition. If you do not already have this guide on your bookshelf you should add it now. If for nothing what this guide provides is an outstanding example of how to embed science education reform methods effectively into your teaching of ecology.

Fletcher Brown is on the faculty of the education department at the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana.

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As I look at the world of K-12 education, I see far too many challenges to cover in this short presentation. Some have been with us for a very long time, while some are more recent, and few relate only to environmental education. My list of challenges is extensive, but because of time and space constraints I will discuss only a few of them of them here.

EDUCATION REFORM

During the past twenty years concern has grown across the country regarding the quality and relevance of education to the needs of society and the demands of a changing economy and world order. Reform efforts of varying types and degrees are evident in every state. Components of the reform movement include: constructivist thinking and conceptual understanding, cooperative learning strategies, interdisciplinary approaches, problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills and processes, the use of authentic assessment, and recognition of the value of multicultural education. In my judgment, these have been, for the most part, positive steps in the right direction.

But… the BIG national movements, initially imposed by state legislators and then seized upon by the education community itself, are for standards and statewide testing.

What does this mean for education in general, and specifically for EE? The activities of the past few years can be described as “frenzied” as state education agencies have been, with the help of teacher organizations, busy generating lengthy lists of what children

should know in the various disciplines and developing tests to determine how much of it they actually do know. Meanwhile, school districts have been scurrying to articulate their curricula with the new standards and statewide testing schedules. A lot of time, and

many education dollars, have gone into this movement, in the hope of demonstrating the effectiveness of the education we are providing for children.

I personally characterize this effort with the proverbial tale of the emperor’s new clothes; we keep trying to justify, via paper and pencil tests, that we really are educating our youth. I’ll have more to say about this later.

In any case, I see two challenges here. The first is that few of these statewide standards include EE, and fewer still have included EE in the tests– assuming that the tests are valid in the first place. But if EE is valuable it should, like other educational programs, be treated the same way. EE standards, and questions dealing with EE, should be– must be– included in the standards and testing programs across the nation.

Educators will also be challenged to teach children for “meaning and understanding”, and not simply coach them to pass the test. Many of the statewide tests are, in my judgment, generating a lot of needless anxiety on the part of children, their teachers, school administrators, and parents– for political, rather than sound educational, reasons. Thus, I see getting past teaching “to pass the test” as the second major challenge.

If historical patterns hold true, the pendulum will in a few years swing the other way and the push for standards will probably go away, to be replaced by some other scheme. What comes next? I believe that we will once again strive to put real meaning back into our educational processes. Perhaps this is only wishful thinking. But as my colleague and good friend Frank Gallagher likes to say, “It’s good to be able to read, it’s better to understand what you have read, but it’s best to know where the paper came from that made the page you have just read.”

ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING

We simply have to find better ways of determining if and when learning has taken place. We have made significant progress in assessing learning; authentic assessment has the potential for quite accurately measuring learning outcomes in very meaningful ways.

So the methodology for more meaningful and accurate assessment is already here, and to rely on simple paper-and-pencil tests is, in my judgment, pure folly. One challenge for K-12 educators is to supplement the older and more established methods of assessment with some of the newer techniques and strategies. The new Project Learning Tree has made significant progress in this area, but there remains a long way to go. The techniques are there, but (once again) we must strive to break our old habits.

A MATTER OF RESPECT

Another big challenge is to legitimize EE for K-12 education. Despite years of effort on the part of well-meaning environmental educators, despite all the research evidence regarding global deterioration, despite all the warnings, we have not been able to make EE a basic and important part of the curricula of our schools. To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, “EE just doesn’t get any respect.” We are still too often viewed as a bunch of “tree huggers” and our field is relegated to after-school activity status, or a club activity, or an elective course in high schools. We need to find ways to make EE an integral part of the K-12 curriculum, to be infused into every subject area K-12, and to be accepted as a legitimate area of inquiry, along with science, social studies, English, math, etc. I have been in this business for more than thirty years, and unfortunately am not particularly optimistic about this becoming a reality.

WHOSE JOB IS IT?

The interdisciplinary nature of EE presents a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” quandary. First of all, American education does not lend itself very well to interdisciplinary studies because everything in our schools is neatly compartmentalized.

At the high school level that’s very obvious; we have separate classes for math, English, science– no, correction: we even have separate classes for each of the sciences like biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and even more separate classes for the special classes, like ecology, ornithology, physical chemistry, organic chemistry, etc. Even at the elementary school, in self-contained classrooms, the day is compartmentalized according to academic subjects. American education seems to like to take the world apart; EE likes to put the world back together. In most schools where it is believed that EE is truly interdisciplinary, the position is taken that all teachers should teach EE, no matter what subject they are assigned to teach. That sounds good. But in reality, when something is everybody’s job it turns out to be nobody’s job.

For EE to be successful at the elementary level, not only is teacher preparation crucial, but EE concepts, activities, etc., must be built into the curriculum itself. This is not a new idea; John Dewey in 1914 proposed a core curriculum that focused on the environment. In Dewey’s curriculum, reading was taught using books with environmental themes, science looked much like what we now call EE, math was taught using environmental problems, etc.

At the secondary level, REAL team teaching needs to be practiced. By real team teaching, I mean that various subject matter specialists need to be in the classroom together, each adding his/her perspective to the exploration of the environmental topic under discussion. This does NOT mean that the science teacher presents his point today, the social studies teacher tomorrow, etc. Rather, all are in the same classroom interacting with each other and with the students at the same time.

The EE curriculum must, moreover, be carefully designed and made available to all teachers so that each will know what the others are teaching at each grade level. It should be sequential, with each succeeding year’s EE concepts and experiences building on the previous year’s work, much like the “spiral curriculum” recommended by Jerome Bruner many years ago.

While the excellent national programs such as Project Learning Tree, Project WILD, Project WET, etc., are extremely valuable and important to our schools, they do not in themselves constitute a curriculum. They are activity guides that certainly can be used as parts of a well-designed curriculum.

However, they are not in and of themselves a curriculum as I would define the term.

CONCLUSION

The concerns discussed above are by no means an exhaustive set of challenges facing EE in the K-12 sector, nor does my discussion do full justice to any of them; this is a short presentation, not a full course, and not the dialog that must be part of serious attempts at resolution. Though not presented here, additional concerns that are very much on my mind include: teacher recruitment and education, curriculum, competition from technology, overcoming the opposition, developing partnerships, and urbanization.

There are many others, but these appear to me to be among the more prominent, some of the more difficult with which to deal.

The challenges are there, and it is our task, individually and organizationally, to meet them head on, to resolve them as best we can, and to move on from there. We will achieve more if we confront them together, as professionals working cooperatively in a professional organization.

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Review by Jaimie P. Cloud

This spectacular collection of essays by Fritjof Capra, Wendell Berry, Alice Waters, David Orr and Donella Meadows, to name just a few, is woven together with stories of the editors’ own journeys, over time, educating for sustainability. The book is organized into a system of four interdependent parts: Vision, Tradition/Place, Relationship, and Action. The reader can experience the book sequentially or can enter at any point and travel back and forth between the parts and between each essay and story. No matter where you enter, the book hangs together as a unified whole.
The editors have skillfully selected the authors and their essays to convey the essence of each of the four parts of book and have simultaneously used the essays to communicate the learning process in which they themselves have been engaged. Here’s just one of many examples:

“As we immersed ourselves in the life of communities and ecosystems, important strategies began to emerge. Through our collaboration with STRAW (Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed) we became aware of a nationwide phenomenon: family farms on the urban edge were going out of business for want of a market. We also knew that city kids around the San Francisco Bay were going to school hungry. On a map of regional problems, we highlight urban fringe farms at risk, malnutrition, solid waste generated by students throwing away their lunches, underachievement, and vandalism. See these all together on the map, we recognized them not as isolated problems, but parts of one overarching problem of disconnection: of rural communities from urban life, of food from people’s understanding of its origins, of health from the environment — and of problems from the patterns that perpetuate them.”

Both living systems and learning develop over time, and witnessing the congruence between the two is stunning. This book is classic and timeless.
Ecological Literacy is required reading for anyone who wants to understand what we mean when we say, “Education for Sustainability.” The core content and the habits of mind that characterize Education for Sustainability are seamlessly and elegantly communicated by many of our most revered champions in the way that only learner-centered experiential educators can do.

Jaimie P. Cloud (jaimie@sustainabilityed.org) is president of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in New York City. This review originally appeared in The Communicator, the newsletter of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE).

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