Education For Sustainability

Better Practices

For

Secondary School Teachers

And

All those sharing a watershed with one!

We acknowledge and thank the First Peoples of the territory of the __ language group on whose traditional and unceded territories we teach, learn, and live upon where the __ people continue their traditions and cultural education.

Download the 3.8MB PDF version – Better Practices Guide

Your EfS Activity Guide

Full-length Videos

• Clean Bin Project & Just Eat It (by Jen & Grant), Flow, Food Inc., Forks Over Knives, Home, Inconvenient Truth, No Impact Man, One Big Home, Sharkwater & Revolution (by Rob Stewart), The Corporation, The Cove, WALL-E, Waterlife, and BBC series’ Life, Blue Planet, and Plant Earth 1 & 2

Short Videos

• Get’em Outside (NCLI), How Wolves Change Rivers (YouTube), Nature is Speaking (series), Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan (YouTube), Speech by Severn Cullis-Suzuki at Rio Summit 1990 (YouTube), The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (YouTube), The Arctic Refuge (YouTube), The Story of Stuff (series) with Annie Leonard, and Unravel (YouTube)

Podcasts

• Deconstructing Dinner, EcoShock Radio, Environment (NPR), Green Majority, Living on Earth (PRI), Mission Transition (Sierra Club), and Quirks and Quarks (CBC)

EfS Project Funding Sources (check your local sources)

• Chamber of Commerce, community foundations, energy companies, grocers, home hardware stores, outdoor gear stores, school district budgets, school parent advisory committees, seed companies, WWF

EfS Daily Hooks

• Animal/plant of the day desk calendar
• IUCN Red List of Threatened Species
• NOAA Earth satellite image of the day
• Share global significance of the day (i.e. World _ Day)

Daily Exposures to Nature

• 30 minutes of nature journaling (bullet-style)
• Focused observation walks (i.e. perspective, human impact, sensory, systems, wildlife, mapping
• Hand watering of schoolyard plants
• Imagination in ecological education (i.e. mythical explanations, casting a spell, tracking skills, etc.
• Permaculture design for future use of the school grounds
• Sensory solitude spots in nature

Teacher Guides with EfS Lesson Plans

• A People’s Curriculum for the Earth (Rethinking Schools)
• Engaging Imagination in Ecological Education: Practical Strategies for Teaching
• Food for Thought Guide
• Get Growing! Activities for Food and Garden Learning
• Get Outdoors! An Educator’s Guide to Outdoor Classrooms in Parks, School Grounds, and other Special Places
• Greening School Grounds: Creating Habitats for Learning
• Greening Your Community: Strategies for Engaged Citizens
• Teaching Green: The High School Years (Green Teacher)
• The Nature Connection: An Outdoor Workbook
• The Permaculture Student by Matt Powers

Things to do with about 30 students

• BioBlitz – citizen science data collection of biodiversity
• Everyone contributes highlights to a neighbourhood map
• Grow garlic! Everyone plants one clove in September, learns to care for it, and harvest in June
• Inquiry Project – where students choose to research a most sustainable model of…(i.e. building, school, person,  hospital, career, company, meal, etc.)

EfS Alphabet:

• A is for Action
• B is for Biodiversity
• C is for Communities
• D is for Decision-making
• E is for Education
• F is for Food
• G is for Garden
• H is for Habitat
• I is for Inquiry
• J is for Journaling
• K is for Knowledge
• L is for Learning
• M is for Mobilizing
• N is for Neighbourhood
• O is for Ocean
• P is for Place-based
• Q is for Questioning
• R is for Rewilding
• S is for Sustainability
• T is for Time
• U is for Understanding
• V is for Vision
• W is for Wilderness
• X is for Xeric
• Y is for Youth
• Z is for Zones

Classroom Modifications

• Be able to see nature through the window or care for indoor plants
• Free stuff box of items to be repurposed
• Goose Bin = good on one side paper
• Have access to a nearby garden area
• Multi-bin diversion to zero-waste, including: paper, plastic, metal, glass, refundables, light bulb, batteries, soft plastic, small electronics, dried-out markers, and compost

Go-to EfS Equipment

• Egg incubator for annual hatching on Earth Day
• Hand lenses 10x to magnify the beauty in micro-life
• Hand trowels for whole class digging activities
• Permaculture base-maps & element cards
• Stapleless stapler and refillable whiteboard markers
• Talking stick for student check-ins

About the Author

• Michael Wolfe teaches science and outdoor education at McNair Secondary School in Richmond, BC. He hatches chicken, duck, and quail, and then raises them in the school’s habitat courtyard – one with the goal of becoming the most biologically diverse space in the school district. Recently he added an indoor aquaponic system to explore with his EcoClub. Michael Wolfe is a 2018 graduate from the inaugural Education for Sustainability M.Ed. program at UBC and CityStudio Vancouver. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, Tiffany.
• Twitter @bogberry or email mwolfe@sd38.bc.ca

We acknowledge children everywhere. We are inspired by the vibrancy of your youth and we commit to continually striving to make the world, we borrow from you, a more peaceful, loving, and safe place in which to learn, live, and love.

Education for Sustainability Selected Resources

Global / International:

• 350.org, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Green World Campaign, International Union for Conservation of Nature, Jane Goodall Institute, Ocean Literacy, Project Greenworld, UN Environment, Wetlands International, WWF

Federal / National:

• Aldo Leopold (.org), Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), Canadian Parks and Wilderness (CPAWS), Centre for Ecoliteracy, Child and Nature Alliance of Canada, Children and Nature Network, David Suzuki Foundation, Earth Charter Initiative, Earth Day Network, Ecojustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Envirothon, Evergreen, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Green Learning, Global Footprint Network, Nature Canada, Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative (PEEC), Resources for Rethinking (R4R), Rethinking Schools, Sea Shepherd Conservation, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, Sustainable Schools Project (.org), The Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication (EECOM), The Climate Reality Project, The Nature Conservancy Canada, WWF Canada

Regional (State, Provincial, Watershed, etc.):

• Ancient Forest Alliance, BC Agriculture in the Classroom Foundation, BC Environmental Educators’ Provincial Specialist Association (EEPSA), BC Green Games, BC Sustainable Energy Association, CityStudio Vancouver, Classrooms to Communities Education Network (C2C), Columbia Basin Environmental Education Network (CBEEN), Fresh Air Learning, Hub Cycling, Metro Vancouver Education, Rivershed Society of BC, Wild BC, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Wilderness Awareness School, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y)

EfS Blogs, Magazines, Newsletters & Journals:

• Canadian Journal of Environmental Education (CJEE), Clearing, Encyclopedia of Life, Environmental News Network (ENN), Green Teacher, Mother Earth News, Orion, Pando Community, Sustainable Communities Online, TeachBC, The Solutions Journal

Local Non-governmental Foundations, Organizations & Societies:

• Bioneers, Burns Bog Conservation, Check Your Head (.org), Destination Conservation, ECO Canada, Ecology Center, Environmental Education (FEE.global), Environmental Working Group (EWG), Environmental Youth Alliance, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity, Learning for a Sustainable Future (LSF), No Child Left Inside Coalition, Rocky Mountain Institute, Stanley Park Ecology, Think Earth, Think & Eat Green @ School

EfS Fieldtrip Ideas: (check your local sources)

• Aquariums, botanical gardens, energy generation stations, farms, landfills, manufacturing/processing facilities, nature parks, science centres, water/waste treatment facilities

If you would like to report a faulty link or have anything new to add, please email Michael Wolfe at: bogberry@gmail.com