Sustainability Education Activities

Tomas,

Projects Learning Tree, Wild and WET have activities that help students understand the footprint aspects of sustainability.

Anne

Anne Lewis
I&E Project Administrator
Project WET SD
805 W. Sioux Ave.
Pierre, SD 57501
605-224-8295
www.sd-discovery.com 

Good morning,

In Canada we have an non-profit organization called : Learning for a Sustainable Future. In the Curriculum Review Initiative section you will find docs that can be used for ESD http://www.lsf-lst.ca/. Many of our provinces now also have SD as part of their curriculum.

The UN also has a good site on ESD, 2005-2014 being the UN decade for the Education of SD( UNDESD).
http://portal.unesco.org/education/admin/ev.php?URL_ID=27234&URL_DO=DO_
TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201

In Ottawa , the Sierra Club of Canada has " School Educational Workshops" which may be suitable but content would need to be adapted to a US context. http://ontario.sierraclub.ca/ottawa/education.php

Good luck!
Julie

Thank you Julie for the info on LSF. I'm part of one of the provincial working groups set up by the LSF. So far we have don't have a sustainability curriculum in Nova Scotia. No doubt there are lots of stalwart teachers out there who have gone the "supplementary route" when they have had time: i.e. a spring litter pick-up. This is nice, but to quote Steve Van Matre, it's like a neighbour passing you two cups of water when your house is on fire. There is no integrated, core program with an emphasis on lifestyles change here. I'd sure love to hear of one if there's such a thing in any other province. Sadly, I had never scrutinized the LSF website until I explored your link. Thank you very much. Something I noticed right away was the presence of oil and gas companies among the funders. It is good to see them taking some form of responsibility this way, but I wonder to what extent this beholds us to their version of sustainability, and although the website is beautiful and the writing lovely, I don't see "lifestyle change" spelled out as a priority anywhere (I see "skills acquisition"). Subtle difference there. I'll be sure to raise this question when we have our next N.S. working group meeting in November ... If there are folks with additional insights on this, please share.

Best to you & the planet,
Anna-Maria Galante in Coldbrook, N.S.

Anna-Maria

You should find out more about the Ontario government's recent commitment to environmental education, perhaps as a model for Nova Scotia. Shaping Our Schools, Shaping Our Future.

Anna-Maria You should find out more about the Ontario government's recent commitment to environmental education, perhaps as a model for Nova Scotia. Shaping Our Schools, Shaping Our Future. EWGpReport 'Shaping our Schools' Ont. June 2007 This commitment was not due to LSF's work.

Regards
John Barclay

Triune's Enjoyable Learning
http://www.triune.ca

In developing our new program for elementary school Grades 4 and 5, the underlying goal was to initiate behavioral change around actions that may have a negative impact on the wastewater and storm water drainage systems and ultimately the River (North Saskatchewan River in this case) and the environment. Attitude, actions/behaviors, knowledge, and skills are what we intended for the programs to provide to the teaching community and then obviously on to the kids and through them to their parents, families, and friends. Linking to the Alberta Education program of studies and developing an integrated program that focused on science but included language arts, social studies, classroom chemistry (grade 5); and mathematics (grade 5) were further goals within the development of these two programs entitled Treat it Right! Storm water (Grade 5) and Treat it Right! Wastewater (Grade 4). We have developed and launched this program as a supplemental program but we endeavoured to make it a fit that will work well for the teachers at these grade levels. www.edmonton.ca/drainage/education I will be visiting the sites noted by Anna Maria Galante and Julie Desmarais in their e-mails. I welcome any comments about Treat it Right!

Janice Dewar, B.Ed.,

M.D.E. Education Officer
Drainage Services,
Strategic Planning
Asset Management and Public Works
6th Floor, Century Place
9803 - 102A Avenue NW
Edmonton, Alberta T5J 3A3
Ph: (780) 442-4364
Fax: (780) 496-5648

There's also a curriculum called the Quest for Less put out by EPA. http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/education/quest/index.htm

Stacy Graison

Public Programs Manager
The Florida Aquarium
701 Channelside Drive
Tampa, FL 33602
Ph. 813-367-4066
Fax. 813-273-4161
Email: [email protected]