Becoming green is a journey of a thousand miles that begin with a single step: education. Here, we can share the stories, ideas, and resources that keep us going.
Edutopia Webinar: "Greening Your School" post discussion!
Here we can explore the ideas, concepts, and educational potential presented in the "Greening Your School" Webinar.
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Competition over problems to solve...
Just my opinion, but I think we can work on many issues at once. Our school is able to offer many different clubs for students to be involved in--some focus on social issues, others on the environment. We try to get our students to follow their passions...we understand different people will feel different about different issues. If people have trouble understanding the impact of climate change, we try to make the data about it as comprehensible as possible through tutorials we found on the web.
How to create community and building partnerships?
Often, there are many people and groups working separtely for common goals. What ideas have you seen for bringing together community and building partnerships with the schools (occasionally community groups feel quite separate from school groups) ?
Leah Fietsam
inner city students
How to connect inner city students with what sustains our quality of life?Joanne Thibault
Energy monitoring projects
Suggestions for energy monitoring projects K-12?
Dr. Bill Wiecking, Energy Lab Director, Hawaii Prep Academy, Kamuela Hawaii
Ning rec
I have a Ning (http://globalgreen.ning.com) I have created to connect schools and educators who are interested in green schools, etc.
I work with both Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots and Polar Bears International, and both organizations have resources for educators.
Julene Reed
Cool the Earth link
As a solution for student and parent engagement in the climate change issue, Cool the Earth offers a parent-volunteer run climate change action program for grades K-8. www.cooltheearth.org
Tracey Diaz
Additional Green Resources
As a reminder, we've listed all of the websites, books, and other resources talked about in the webinar at: edutopia.org/october-29-webinar. We've also included some relevant articles Edutopia has done on this topic.
Enjoy!
Thanks to all!
Tim and Tom - thank you for a most excellent and informative presentation! Jason, thanks for moderating this discussion, and - to all the webinar attendees and Twitterfolk who are here - thank you for your great work!
Keep the questions coming...
betty
Favorite part
Great questions Jason. One of my favorite parts of the webinar was when Tim showed how a very unlikely pairing became such a smooth transition: From environmental studies to city planning.
It stuck with me, the images of students planning out an old factory building revitalization by taking pictures and elementary kids stating their opinion at city councils for necessary sidewalks (I especially liked that each student had note cards that were bright yellow fishes!).
A VERY close second was hearing about Tom's cool biodiesel project in his high school. In the Q & A, Tim made the comment that Tom approaching a local University to partner with was a very smart move and I completely agree. I'd also add to look to the community, as a whole, for support if there isn't a local University. Parents may be engineers, work at companies with employee volunteer programs, and there may be even local biodiesel businesses around.
Anyway, my two cents :)
Green=Fluffy Hippy or Green=Scientific Inquiry
There is definitely the risk of a false perception about what "being green" means. If not framed right, the projects may come across as not being rigorous enough, even if they are.
I've found that parent education is as much a part of my job as teaching students at times. When embarking on a new green project I often tie it to our larger integrated themes, concepts, and skills. I make sure that projects incorporate relevant writing assignments (like letters to the editor or press releases), investigations (the science behind a phenomenon and experiments around certain aspects), and historical contexts (to put it in perspective.
Starting out, I found that the trick was to communicate these elements to colleagues, administrators, and parents in a way that enumerated their academic benefits. I almost added the "green-ness" as an aside. As the project moved forward, and there was more buy-in, the other additional (and perhaps more long term) gains became more apparent to all parties.
I'm fortunate that I work in a school that values green projects, so it was never a hard sell. In an environment less supportive of such projects, I'd start small, and build slowly.