How do I bring sustainability education to my school/district?

We offer on-site technical assistance to teachers and administrators of interested schools. Depending on your goals and needs, we can work with your school programs ranging from one to three day intensive workshops (to begin to develop awareness among faculty and staff) to three to five year initiatives (for a "Whole Systems approach" to engage an entire department or entire school community in the deep work of EFS and lay the foundation for life-long learning).

On-site technical assistance includes the following:

• Coaching and modeling best practices ("principles of learning", learner-centered instructional strategies, formative assessment, effective inquiry, lesson debrief) with faculty
• Student work analysis to inform changes/adaptations in instructional practices
• Program/Partnership planning
• Lesson planning (in the context of backwards design/understanding by design)
• Use and design of rubrics and checklists to assess student learning
• Reflection on program's progress, determination of areas for additional support, sharing of assessment results

A Whole Systems approach combines curriculum and instruction, physical plant, the development of your institution as a learning organization, procurement, investments (where appropriate), and relationship with the surrounding community. We work primarily with curriculum and instruction, and we have strategic partnerships with professionals who specialize in the various other parts of the system.

We work with the foremost strategic partners

Our partners are available to us on a project by project basis. To begin the process of educating for a sustainable future, each existing school and school system has to start somewhere. Some begin with their physical plant and operations and move to curriculum and instruction. Others begin with curriculum and instruction and then move to the other parts of the “ whole system”. Some of the new schools have had the opportunity to start with the whole system in mind, and are elegantly designed so that all the parts of the system are mutually beneficial to one another. This is rare—but it is happening already. Whatever your situation, we have carefully selected our partners because of their knowledge, expertise, and experience in their particular part of the system, and their respect for and sensitivity to the other parts. The list of partners will grow very slowly, as it is the quality, not the quantity, that is vital to our work.

Teaching and Learning

All our curriculum materials and our professional development protocols are informed by, and in many cases co-written by the master teachers, professional developers, and curriculum and assessment professionals of Learner Centered Initiatives, Ltd. (LCI) and the Center for the Study of Expertise in Teaching and Learning (CSETL). These organizations are dedicated to the design of rich, student centered instruction K-12 that is assessment driven, standards based, differentiated for multiple intelligences, and multi and inter-disciplinary. The purpose of their pedagogy is to develop in students higher order, critical and systemic thinking, applied learning, and transference.

Learner Centered Initiatives (www.lciltd.org)
Center for the Study of Expertise in Teaching and Learning (www.csetl.org)
Principal, Giselle Martin-Kniep
New York City/Long Island

Physical Plant, Site and Regional Context

We encourage our clients to take a whole systems approach to education for sustainability whenever possible. We use “the place as curriculum” in classroom instruction regularly, and we work with the professionals who research the sites, develop the plans, design the buildings and the landscapes, construct the wetlands, and work with the operations personnel to maintain the places over time.

Regenesis (www.regenesisgroup.com)
Principals, Pamela Mang, Tim Murphy and Ben Haggard
Santa Fe, NM

Integrative Design Collaborative (www.integrativedesign.net)
Principal, Bill Reed
Boston, MA

Hone and Associates (www.hone.biz)
Principal, Keith Hone
Pennington, NJ

New Civic Works (212-217-1558)
Principal, Hilary Brown
New York

Schools that Learn, Organizational Change and Systems Thinking/System Dynamics

We know that in order to move toward a sustainable future, we will need to have "schools that learn in communities that learn" for sustainability. That means that schools and their communities must work together and change over time. It also means that they will need to become “systems thinkers” and “systems actors”. This will require education, and in some cases, re-education of all concerned, from the kindergarteners to the elders.

Society for Organizational Learning (SOL) (www.solonline.org)
Principal, Peter Senge
K-12 Systems Thinking/System Dynamics Education, Linda Booth Sweeney
Boston, MA