Events
Education Summit: How can we build community resilience through education?
How can we build community resilience through education? Join other educators and students at an Education Summit focused on this question. The Education Summit is on April 6, 2016, day three of the Local Solutions: Eastern Regional Climate Preparedness Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, co-hosted by Antioch University New England and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Summit activities will include: keynote address from climate activist Bill McKibben, a panel on community resilience and education, informational sessions, professional development workshops, a collaborative activity, field trips, and a participant forum. You can learn more about the Education Summit and register here: www.communityresilience-center.org/conference-2016/education-summit. You may choose to attend only the Education Summit on April 6, two days of the Local Solutions conference, or all three days. Accommodations are available at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel. Hotel reservations made prior to March 11 will be at a discounted rate. You will find more information about lodging here: www.communityresilience-center.org.
Green Schools Conference and Expo
Early bird registration for the 2016 Green Schools Conference and Expo is open through January 29, 2016. Make plans now to join fellow green schools advocates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania March 31-April 1, 2016 for the 6th annual conference and expo!
Resources
Energy Hog Challenge Teacher’s Guide
Energy Hog is an energy efficiency campaign developed by the Ad Council and run by the Alliance to Save Energy. This teacher’s guide includes a series of classroom activities that guide students through lessons about different sources of energy, how we use energy at home, and actions they can take to save energy.
Indoor air quality (IAQ) plays a critical role in the health, attendance, and academic performance of students and staff. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Savings Plus Health: Indoor Air Quality Guidelines for School Building Upgrades (the Guide) is designed to help K-12 stakeholders navigate the construction and energy retrofit process using an integrated approach and with IAQ, occupant health, and safety protections in mind. The Guide includes 23 IAQ priority issues and related assessment protocols, recommended and expanded actions, and resources and tools for project planning and communication. It is accompanied by the customizable, time-saving, and actionable Energy Saving Plus Health Checklist Generator (Microsoft Excel) that enables stakeholders to create IAQ checklists for specific upgrade or construction projects to protect and enhance IAQ. Schools districts can use the Guide to manage, design, and implement school facilities construction plans that maximize energy efficiency and minimize financial losses and negative health effects on students and staff.
Scholastic Every Kid in a Park
Scholastic has developed a set of three learning activities to introduce fourth grade students to our nation’s natural and historical resources: 1) Exploring Federal Lands and Waters; 2) Environmental Stewardship; and 3) Citizen Science. Each learning activity includes lesson plans, activity sheets, and resource sheets. The lessons were developed to complement the Every Kid in a Park Initiative.
Professional Development
Global Online Course
Environmental Education: Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Addressing Wicked Problems
February 1 – April 24, 2016
Course Leader: Marianne Krasny (Cornell University)
Course overview: The goal of this course is to create an environmental education “trading zone”—an online space where scholars and students gather to learn about multiple disciplines that shed light on how to improve environmental quality and change environmental behaviors. Each of the lectures, readings, discussions, and case studies will focus on the implications of a particular discipline for environmental education, as well as what environmental education has to contribute to related disciplines and sectors. Learn about how environmental education, environmental governance, environmental psychology, environmental sociology and other disciplines can work together to address ‘wicked problems,’ not readily addressed by working in disciplinary silos. Cornell University will grant two types of certificates (Achievement and Expert) depending on work completed at no cost to students.
Envisioning a Nature Kindergarten
Presenter: Enid Elliot
Wednesday, January 20 2016 7:30-8:30pm EST
Get children outdoors all morning, every morning, no matter what the weather. Enid Elliot will share her experience in establishing a nature kindergarten in the Sooke School District in British Columbia. Her goal: to enable you to start one in your community or to enhance an existing one. Inspired by the forest schools in Europe and wanting to provide young children with an opportunity to learn outdoors within a natural context, this nature kindergarten has grown as a result of considerable community interest, support, and commitment. While the educators adhered to the provincial curriculum, they added experiential components including natural history and traditional narratives of local First Nations. The resulting how to buy ambien in mexico learning and skills gained by the children has exceeded what is mandated by the provincial curriculum. Nature kindergartens are now spreading across North America. Each one is unique, and adds to our understanding of the possibilities. There is still much to learn about venturing outside the four classroom walls, but for young people in these programs, the process has begun.
Addressing Aquatic Invasive Species
Presenters: Bob Thomson and Brook Schryer
Tuesday, February 2 2016 7:30-8:30pm EST
Tackling aquatic invasives species (AIS) presents special challenges for educators. Bob Thomson uses inquiry methods with a place-based format to ensure that students are participants in the educational process. AIS allows his students to develop their informational reading skills on a subject that they can research and create informational essays and presentations that they can use to inform the community on ways to prevent the spread of AIS. They also do research projects focused on understanding the impact of invasive species, in cooperation with local agencies. Brook Schryer will introduce the Grades 4 & 6 curriculum units developed by the Invading Species Awareness Program of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.
Collecting Field Data on Local Birds with Elementary Students
Presenters: Renee Bachman and Ted Watt
Thursday, February 4 2016 7:30-8:30pm EST
Birds provide a ready access for elementary level students to a variety of life science content areas. Science practices such as bird observation skills (visual and auditory), field data collection and analysis skills, and student presentation techniques for the wider community are but some of the options that will be explored in this webinar. The presenters planned and carried out a nesting bird survey with 5th Graders in Western Massachusetts as part of Cornell’s Birds in Forested Landscape program. While teaching in Phoenix, Renee and her students collected data for the Central Arizona & Phoenix Long Term Environmental Research Project. Ted has taught bird identification in informal settings for over thirty years. In this webinar, Ted and Renee will describe their projects, including how Cornell University’s Ebird can be utilized in the classroom. Outdoor bird study with students, aligned with NGSS practices, is tons of fun!
Remote Cameras in Environmental Education
Presenters: Ryan Pennesi and Dawn Tanner
Wednesday, February 10 2016 7:30-8:30pm EST
Young people do not realize there are so many interesting things that they can learn about animals in their own schoolyard and neighborhood. Using remote cameras helps teachers to increase technology learning in their classrooms and brings students outside to create meaningful connections. Whether you think small scale at what your students will learn about the animals that share their space when they are absent or you choose to connect with local scientists, setting up trail cameras will give you a window into the wild. Join Ryan and Dawn as they address choosing the best locations to place the cameras, how to set them up, and what can be done both inside and outside of the classroom with the resulting images and data.
Grants
Fiskars Project Orange Green Thumb
Project Orange Thumb, sponsored by Fiskars, is dedicated to supporting the community garden movement throughout the U.S. and Canada. Fiskars’ Project Orange Thumb garden grants provide tools and resources to help communities reach their goals for neighborhood beautification, community collaboration, and healthy, sustainable food sources. Project Orange Thumb is intended to promote new garden spaces and garden expansions. Nonprofit organizations, public schools, and municipalities in the U.S. and Canada are eligible to apply. The application deadline is February 1, 2016.
GetEdFunding is a curated collection of grants and awards created by education professionals for education professionals. Its database was designed to be easy-to-use and reliable, and all grant and funding opportunities are updated daily. Users can search by six criteria, including 43 areas of focus, 8 content areas, and 14 twenty-first century themes and skills, including environmental literacy. Once registered on the site, users can save grants of interest and return to them at any time.
NOAA Environmental Literacy Grants
The NOAA Office of Education has issued a competitive funding opportunity for education projects designed to strengthen K-12 students’ environmental literacy so they can make informed decisions for community resilience to extreme weather events and other environmental hazards. Successful projects will advance NOAA’s mission and build the environmental literacy necessary for community resilience by focusing on geographic awareness and an understanding of Earth systems and the threats and vulnerabilities that are associated with a community’s location. Proposed projects should be 2-5 years long and have total budget requests of $250,000 to $500,000 for the duration of the project. The deadline for applications for this funding opportunity is 11:59:59 pm EST on February 8, 2016.
