It’s official! The 2016 Green Schools Conference and Expo is four weeks away. Both the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council and the Green Schools National Network are working hard to ensure your conference experience is nothing less than the best. We have a terrific line up of speakers and breakout sessions for you to choose from. As you prepare to submit your registration for the conference, I encourage you to come a day early and take in one of the unique pre-conference tours or workshops we are offering this year.
Here is a sneak peek at what you can expect:
- An Immersive Experience at the Environmental Charter School: Authentic Learning, Food Education, and Outdoor Classrooms. Take a field trip to the Environmental Charter School (ECS) at Frick Park and see how ECS does “school” differently, using ecological literacy as a basis for curriculum and pedagogical development. Participants will tour classrooms with students engaged in authentic learning experiences, have a chance to interact with ECS educators, join students for a holistic school lunch, and engage in an outdoor learning activity using the 644-acre Frick Park as a laboratory.
- Creating Connections to Nature for Human and Ecological Wellness through Biophilia and Art. The goals of this workshop are to help participants realize the power of art in fostering human-nature connections and show them how to implement an effective where can i buy ambien online interdisciplinary Biophilic art program.
- School Sustainability Culture Workshop – Cultivating a Culture of Sustainability in Schools: Moving Beyond Environmental Education. This workshop allows participants to experience a sampling of the Green Building Alliance’s School Sustainability Culture Program, a two-year long engagement that creates a learning community of eight schools and districts to become leaders in embracing and embedding sustainability into their facilities, culture, and curriculum. The workshop will utilize human-centered design strategies to facilitate exploration and discussion of values, purpose, and vision for 21st century education, and will include individual and group activities, discussion, and reflection.
- Sustainability and Problem-Based Learning Field Trips at Chatham University’s Eden Hall Campus. Eden Hall is a 30-year vision of a new sustainable college campus, featuring net-zero energy, net-zero water, and sustainable agriculture on-site. On this tour, participants will experience the campus as K-12 students experience it. While touring the school’s green buildings, renewable energy systems, agriculture facilities, onsite wastewater system, aquaculture lab, woodlands and more, participants will get the opportunity to engage with real problems that give visiting students the opportunity to help design and build the campus through extended engagements.
All pre-conference sessions are on Wednesday March 30, 2016 from 11:00am – 5:00pm and cost $125 to attend. Registration information for these sessions, as well as the conference itself, can be found here.
See you in four weeks!
