SEPTEMBER, 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
Our Advanced Summer Institute: Curriculum Design Studio
We had another successful Advanced Summer Institute: Curriculum Design Studio, hosting over 50 educators from around the country. Over the course of the week, educators, curriculum supervisors and administrators learned how to design curriculum and assessments that educate for sustainability. Participants enjoyed a series of professional development workshops which included Backwards Design and Assessing Student Work for Evidence of EfS. The Cloud EfS Standards, Performance Indicators and Enduring Understandings were introduced and participants documented and shared best practices and instructional units.
Sessions were filled with lots of creative energy as participants designed and developed new units that integrated EfS, from "Stuff-ology," a 6th grade science unit addressing what happens to "stuff," to an 8th grade art lesson asking, "How can I use are to understand and influence the world around me". We look forward to hosting another EfS Curriculum Design Studio and Introduction to EfS Workshop in the future, so keep an eye on our upcoming events!
The Fourth Annual SoL Education Conference
This year's Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) Education Partnership brought members from our ten sites to Chicago for five days to explore our four frameworks; Organizational Learning, Youth Leadership, Systems Thinking, and Education for Sustainability. Once again, we held sessions that developed essential leadership skills - personal mastery, visioning, dialogue and collaboration, and Systems Thinking - in service of a sustainable future. Focusing on the connection between justice and sustainability, our Learning Journeys took us all across the Chicago area from the notorious public housing development, Cabrini Green to the Gold Coast and beyond. We explored City Farm Growing Home, and the Chicago Green Market. Together, we developed a shared understanding of components integral to achieve a sustainable future through community/school partnerships. Student and adult participants worked together to build action plans that would lift their high schools to their new visions and better link schools and communities within the growing network of the SoL Education Partnership.
Thanks to our participants and facilitators, and a very special local menu selection prepared by our caterers at Gourmet Gorilla, we left inspired and energized for another year of this courageous work transforming schools.
Exploring Place with Rockaway Park High School for Environmental Sustainability.
Lead Educator, Aleidria Lichau, spent a day with the Rockaway Park High School staff on a learning journey of the Rockaways, from the 59th St Marina to Breezy Point. The journey was developed as a professional development activity to familiarize the teaching staff with the community that their school is located in and a percentage of their students are from. The Hudson River Watershed Alliance was instrumental in providing background information of the area. As a result of our learning journery, they will continue to develop a partnership with the high school to engage students in community based projects and education. Later, the staff were facilitated through a systems place protocol, enabling them to deepen their thinking and understanding of systems. The staff felt motivated and encouraged to explore how they could provide their students with similar experiences and develop learning voyages that can enhance their core subject areas, encouraging their students to become engaged citizens in the community.
PROGRAM IMPACTS: New Jersey Learns
Sustainable Cherry Hill has continued to grow as an organization and has increased their impact throughout New Jersey. Understanding the mental models of sustainability and unsustainability, Sustainable Cherry Hill has been able to extend their reach to area school and community leaders, garnering support and leveraging change. Lori Braunstein, the organization's Executive Director, has served as the liaison to the New Jersey Learns national learning community, The SoL Education Partnership.
Far Hills Country Day School is successfully integrating the EfS Standards to revise their third grade curriculum and integrating Systems Thinking into their K-8 curriculum. They have put in a school garden that has kids harvesting garden crops and donating them to the Morristown Soup Kitchen. And they have organized a sustainability-themed film series and discussion group for the entire school community
CLOUD NEWS
Media Partnership with Bioneers
We have recently partnered with Bioneers, a leading media resource that provides a forum and social hub for education about solutions presented through the Bioneers Conference and other Bioneers programs. In the coming months, we will be featuring snippets of Bioneers web, video and media resources on the Cloud Commons that have been carefully aligned to the Cloud EfS Standards and Performance Indicators. If you are a Cloud Commons member, keep an eye out for the new resource material that you can use to help shape your curriculum, classroom material and EfS units.
EXCITING OPPORTUNTIES
Lexus & Scholastic Launch Environmental Contest for Middle and High School Students
Grants of up to $40,000 will be awarded to middle and high schoolers, their teachers, and their schools in recognition of student-led efforts to address environmental issues in their communities. Don't delay--apply now! Deadlines vary so check out their website here.
SEED Webinar Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems
SEED will be holding a free Webinar on their new book, Connected Wisdom: Living Stories about Living Systems. Connected Wisdom is a book that uses folktales from around the world to illustrate different living system principles. Author Linda Booth Sweeney, Ed.D., invokes the reader to look beyond the separate parts of a living system to view things as a whole, whether it is a forest, a classroom, or the planet. In addition to the book, they have created an audio recording on CD with master storyteller Courtney Campbell, who provides an animated version of each folk tale to accompany the principals of each living system.
The Webinar will be held on Wednesday, the 22nd of September, at 8am Central time. It is free to all participants. Anyone can register by emailing SEED at SEED@slb.com
It is especially exciting to announce that the author, Linda Booth Sweeney, will be leading the call. There will be a question and answer session at the end during which participants may ask questions directly to her.
