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Welcome!

April is a great time to integrate environmental education into your classroom, library, site, or home.  With EE Week (April 11 - 17), Earth Day (April 22) and Arbor Day (April 30th) there are plenty of reasons to take whatever children are in your life and yourself outside to learn.

For those of us of a (ahem) certain age, environmental action often has vague or perhaps not so vague connotations of doom and destruction. Who remembers the Crying Indian Keep America Beautiful campaign that debuted on Earth Day in 1971? For those who don't, this commercial aired on Saturday morning cartoons. I look at it now and wonder what were we thinking in assuming that it was appropriate for 6 year olds.

EE has thankfully has moved beyond the across the board "we are polluting ourselves to death" message. There is a place for raising problems, but it needs to be done at a time and in such a way that it motivates students to problem solve and take action, not create fear and despair.

I have some rules of thumb when doing environmental education to keep things fun, positive and healthy:

1. Use a positive approach, especially with young children.  Avoid phrases like "save the Earth".  Rather, frame your activity in the context of taking care of the place we live and the things we use. Even if you use a problem oriented approach (recommended for middle school years and up), help students find the solutions that they themselves can do. 
    
2. When possible, go outside. If you have a choice of doing an activity indoors or out, do it outside.  Weather can make things challenging so have a Plan B but don't automatically punt to the indoors. Let's be real, the outdoors is more interesting than indoors.
    
3. If your children are not used to learning in the outdoors, you may have to do a few dry runs of bringing them outdoors to learn since they usually equate outdoors with play. They will eventually come to see the outdoors as a place for investigation and discovery and not just activity.
    
4. Teach about your local place.  Help your students learn about the flora and fauna.  Do this with older students (9-12) as well as younger as EE sharply drops off after the elementary school years.  This is something that can be integrated into almost any content, save for math (and even then clinometers make a nice algebra/geometry activity).
    
5. Make a personal commitment to environmentally responsible behavior year round.   Carpool, ride a bike, walk, use reusable shopping bags, line dry clothes, use products with less packaging, turn down the heat/turn up the AC. With all that, provide environmental action opportunities in your classroom, library, program or meeting i.e. recycle, encourage material reuse and reduction, composting.
    
6. Join an EE network such as EECSD to show support for EE.  There are unprecedented opportunities for EE in various sectors.  By joining EECSD or other EE organization, you can send the message that EE is an important of year round, life long learning.

Regards,

Anne Lewis
EECSD President
annelewis@sd-discovery.com