Educational Leadership:Teaching Social Responsibility:The Window into Green

Will Richardson's personal annotations on this page

Willrich bookmarked on 2009-06-18 green_ideas environment ecological_intelligence

But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you'll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world's population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.

But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you'll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world's population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  Every teacher should be an environmentalist.
A typical high school student is aware of environmental issues, has discussed and debated climate change or rain forest loss in some class sometime, and might have bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions. But do our students know where the trash goes when it leaves their house? The leading source of greenhouse gas emissions? Why we recycle? (Glass and aluminum, after all, are not rare resources.) If you ask a group of students what we can do to combat the warming trend, several will chime in that we need to remove chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from hair spray. (Many high schoolers conflate global warming with ozone depletion and haven't been told that CFCs were removed from the market 20 years ago.)

My organization surveyed high school students on these questions and more and discovered that although students are overwhelmingly "pro-environment," they possess remarkably little information about breaking environmental issues. One small example: We asked them to name one bird they can identify by song. The leading answer? None. If local birds disappear from the landscape because of extinction, or arrive three weeks late because of warming climates, it's possible that no one will notice.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  They know nothing about life cycle analysis
To address today's geopolitically entangled world of large, complex eco-issues, students simply have to know more than they did 40 years ago.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  Absolutely true.
First, students are extraordinarily disconnected from the environment.
Viewing screens has become a child's full-time job
Second, ask any environmental educator and he or she will bemoan No Child Left Behind, whose pressures have caused many schools to trade outdoor field trips for test prep.
Third, students' exposure to environmental education depends on the luck of the draw and the amalgam of the interests of whichever teachers they happen to have throughout their school career.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  This is why I'm turning into much more of an advocate for all teachers being environmentalists, or having an environmental bent to every aspect of the curriculum.
And finally, the downside of the large nonprofit universe of environmental education facilities—zoos, museums, aquariums, nature centers, parks, arboretums, children's gardens—is that schools approach environmental education like a Chinese menu.
Students are graduating from our schools thinking that green is good. But we haven't given them the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  And the irony is that "green" is not always good. Greenwashing is making the harder conversations even more difficult.
Exposure to nature raises test scores; increases creativity, cooperation, and self-confidence; reduces stress; and enhances cognitive abilities.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  I really want tagging on the comment level right here.
For better or worse, the charter school movement has been sweeping across the United States in the last decade. A growing number of charter schools have been designed around the simple premise that the entire science curriculum can be taught through environmental education.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  Why not the whole curriculum?
In place of the rigorously scheduled school day of science, English, and gym periods, these programs use the environment and the outdoors as the centerpiece of students' curriculum.
U.S. schools teach what American culture considers important. Once society decided that computer literacy was central to a solid education, computer classes invaded schools at warp speed, and the "digital divide" became an important and contentious issue.
But the four horsemen of the global apocalypse—warming, species loss, water scarcity, and population growth—are bearing down on us, and many environmentalists worry about a vanishing window of opportunity for addressing these issues. Science fiction writer H. G. Wells was prophetic when he wrote in 1920 that "human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."

Environmental literacy is one race that education must win.
- Willrich on 2009-06-18
  
  Totally agree.

This link has been bookmarked by 13 people . It was first bookmarked on 17 Jun 2009, by Karen McMillan.

04 Dec 09

Glenys Lowden
environment education leadership responsibility diigo
03 Dec 09

Jeremy Duncan
- 
  
  
  
  
  
  MEMBER SIGN IN
  
  Username or Customer ID
  
  Password
  
  Forgot your Username or Password?
  
  JOIN ASCD | MEMBER BENEFITS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
  
  function printPage()
  {
  window.print();
  }
  
  //function sendData()
  //{
  // window.open('/dnn/desktopmodules/VCMPrintSendArticleModule/sendfriend.htm');
  //}
  
  function sendData(data)
  {
  // Initialize packed or we get the word 'undefined'
  var packed = "";
  for (i = 0; (i < data.length); i++) {
  if (i > 0) {
  packed += ",";
  }
  packed += escape(data[i]);
  }
  window.location = "/dnn/desktopmodules/VCMPrintSendArticleModule/SendFriend.htm?" + packed;
  }
  
  function openWindow(url)
  {
  window.open(url, 'mywindow', 'width=350,height=370,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,status=no,toolbar=no,resizable=yes');
  }
  
  </script>
  
  Print This Article
  Send to a Friend
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  <script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"> OAS_AD('Right'); </script>
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Online Store
  
  ASCD's Top 5 Books
  
  Classroom Instruction That Works
  Building Academic Vocabulary Teachers
  Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching
  How to Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms
  Results Now: How We Can Achieve Unprecedented Improvements
  
  Video | Audio | Downloads
  
  More
  
  
  
  
  
  
- but progress is hardly keeping up with the increasingly urgent issues that face us today.
  - Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03
    
    Sometimes "progress" IS the increasing urgent issue facing us today.
- 1 more annotations...
- - Viewing screens has become a child's full-time job
    Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03
    
    Which is why PARENTS and teachers need to teach children to BALANCE their use of technology with things that a screen cannot and should not replace.
Phil Taylor
environment education leadership responsibility
Terry Elliott
- "No Child Left Behind is contributing to an increasing environmental literacy gap by reducing the amount of environmental education taking place in K–12 classrooms."
  - Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    NCLB is a convenient whipping boy which needs a good whuppin', but the issue is whether most school are set up to help students do more than a cursory, artificial 55 minute or even unit length exploration. Our schools are designed to be shallow. Depth is gotten there through the struggle of iconoclastic teachers who know something more and better is needed.
- outscored their peers on standardized tests,
Karl Fisch
environment diigo
19 Jun 09

arllennium arllennium
environment education willrich diigo notes
Sheri Edwards
environment education
Russ Goerend
environment education leadership
Natalie Wojinski
environment
18 Jun 09

Jonathan Ferrell
Will Richardson
But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you'll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world's population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.

green_ideas environment ecological_intelligence
- But wait, it gets worse. If you place your finger on the pulse of the planet, this is what you'll discover: global surface temperatures rising, glaciers melting, oceans warming, sea levels rising, rain forests burning, coral reefs dying, old-growth forests disappearing, deserts spreading, the world's population increasing, and species vanishing at the highest rates since the extinction of the dinosaurs.
  
  In short, the ecology that underpins our economy is also collapsing. And the solutions to this challenge elude not only most of our graduates, but also us—their teachers, administrators, and parents.
  - Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    Every teacher should be an environmentalist.
  - Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03
    
    Well, all humans should be environmentalists. I think the tricky part is how to talk and learn about the environment and complicated environmental issues in a K-12 setting without crossing into perceived political territory. I think this is a major reason why teachers avoid it.
  - 2 more sticky notes...
  - Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    The political territory is unavoidable. GCC skeptics deny that man is responsible for the problem and GCC advocates say mankind is responsible, hence the politics. And, yes it is a tricky challenge to not make a cartoon of the disagreement. Evolution falls in the same category of subjects to touchy to talk about, but teachers belong there and in GCC, they are charged with working in that breach.
    
    Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03
    
    I think both evolution and the environment are great to talk about. But we, as teachers, should not teach our students bad science.
    The truth is, we don't know if man is responsible or not. You can hypothesize both, but you can't prove either, so don't state whichever conclusion you come to as a fact. That's bad science.
- A typical high school student is aware of environmental issues, has discussed and debated climate change or rain forest loss in some class sometime, and might have bumper-sticker answers to lapel-pin questions. But do our students know where the trash goes when it leaves their house? The leading source of greenhouse gas emissions? Why we recycle? (Glass and aluminum, after all, are not rare resources.) If you ask a group of students what we can do to combat the warming trend, several will chime in that we need to remove chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from hair spray. (Many high schoolers conflate global warming with ozone depletion and haven't been told that CFCs were removed from the market 20 years ago.)
  
  My organization surveyed high school students on these questions and more and discovered that although students are overwhelmingly "pro-environment," they possess remarkably little information about breaking environmental issues. One small example: We asked them to name one bird they can identify by song. The leading answer? None. If local birds disappear from the landscape because of extinction, or arrive three weeks late because of warming climates, it's possible that no one will notice.
  - Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    They know nothing about life cycle analysis
  - Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    The classic disconnect. The lack of interest in birds and bees and everything in between including watersheds and niche ecosystems is reflects a larger ignorance in larger systems. If you don't know where you are on a local map how does a larger map make any more sense? It doesn't.
- 12 more annotations...
- - To address today's geopolitically entangled world of large, complex eco-issues, students simply have to know more than they did 40 years ago.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    Absolutely true.
    
    Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03
    
    I think this fits into the bigger issue of the purpose of schools, school structure and curricular transformation. I would guess that for the vast majority of schools, there is no way they can dive into an issue this complex with the current class/graduation requirements/assesment structure we have. (There are always exceptions to that, schools that are designed differently, or even individual charismatic, knowledgeable, and respected teachers that can pull this off, but in general - not so much.)
    
    1 more sticky notes...
    
    Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    Know more? Well...that depends. If you mean know more stuff about things and all, then no. The capacity to know more about all of these ecological issues is limited by our attention, but perhaps that is the key as well. What we need to teach is how to attend to these issues and how to access the science and politics of these issues. We need to teach them how to jack into the Matrix, but without the nasty little plug in the back of the head.
  - First, students are extraordinarily disconnected from the environment.
  - Viewing screens has become a child's full-time job
  - Second, ask any environmental educator and he or she will bemoan No Child Left Behind, whose pressures have caused many schools to trade outdoor field trips for test prep.
  - Third, students' exposure to environmental education depends on the luck of the draw and the amalgam of the interests of whichever teachers they happen to have throughout their school career.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    This is why I'm turning into much more of an advocate for all teachers being environmentalists, or having an environmental bent to every aspect of the curriculum.
    
    Russ Goerend on 2009-06-19
    
    Going paperless seems to be a natural first-step. (If it can be counted as a "step".) Just the idea of paperless is a discussion-starter with students.
    
    1 more sticky notes...
    
    Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03
    
    @Russ - But then you also have to have a discussion about the environmental impact of "paperless." What's the environmental impact of all these computers and other devices, not to mention the energy required to run them?
  - And finally, the downside of the large nonprofit universe of environmental education facilities—zoos, museums, aquariums, nature centers, parks, arboretums, children's gardens—is that schools approach environmental education like a Chinese menu.
  - Students are graduating from our schools thinking that green is good. But we haven't given them the tools they need to become environmentally literate citizens.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    And the irony is that "green" is not always good. Greenwashing is making the harder conversations even more difficult.
    
    Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    Literacy is a word that has become over-freighted for me. And green? I don't even know what that signifies. It is a dead metaphor hiding a very lively idea--usufruct, that we only have a right to the fruits of the world, not the world itself. At its heart environmentalism is about the ethical question--how much is enough?
  - Exposure to nature raises test scores; increases creativity, cooperation, and self-confidence; reduces stress; and enhances cognitive abilities.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    I really want tagging on the comment level right here.
    
    Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    I will send a note Maggie Tsai to that effect, Will. Nice meta-work with this suggestion.
  - For better or worse, the charter school movement has been sweeping across the United States in the last decade. A growing number of charter schools have been designed around the simple premise that the entire science curriculum can be taught through environmental education.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    Why not the whole curriculum?
    
    Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03
    
    What we need is the administrative capacity to organize schools on the fly in ways that address whatever needs students and teachers and communities express. Schools within schools rising up ad hoc to work on projects both long and short term, networked online and off, and then subsiding when work is done. I don't know of any one school capable of this kind of prestidigitation, but I see informal learning networks like Ravelry doing it everyday for its devoted band of knitters.
  - In place of the rigorously scheduled school day of science, English, and gym periods, these programs use the environment and the outdoors as the centerpiece of students' curriculum.
  - U.S. schools teach what American culture considers important. Once society decided that computer literacy was central to a solid education, computer classes invaded schools at warp speed, and the "digital divide" became an important and contentious issue.
  - But the four horsemen of the global apocalypse—warming, species loss, water scarcity, and population growth—are bearing down on us, and many environmentalists worry about a vanishing window of opportunity for addressing these issues. Science fiction writer H. G. Wells was prophetic when he wrote in 1920 that "human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe."
    
    Environmental literacy is one race that education must win.
    Will Richardson on 2009-06-18
    
    Totally agree.
17 Jun 09

Karen McMillan
environment greenschool ecoeducator

Public Stiky Notes

Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03

I think both evolution and the environment are great to talk about. But we, as teachers, should not teach our students bad science.
The truth is, we don't know if man is responsible or not. You can hypothesize both, but you can't prove either, so don't state whichever conclusion you come to as a fact. That's bad science.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

The political territory is unavoidable. GCC skeptics deny that man is responsible for the problem and GCC advocates say mankind is responsible, hence the politics. And, yes it is a tricky challenge to not make a cartoon of the disagreement. Evolution falls in the same category of subjects to touchy to talk about, but teachers belong there and in GCC, they are charged with working in that breach.
Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03

Well, all humans should be environmentalists. I think the tricky part is how to talk and learn about the environment and complicated environmental issues in a K-12 setting without crossing into perceived political territory. I think this is a major reason why teachers avoid it.
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

Every teacher should be an environmentalist.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

The classic disconnect. The lack of interest in birds and bees and everything in between including watersheds and niche ecosystems is reflects a larger ignorance in larger systems. If you don't know where you are on a local map how does a larger map make any more sense? It doesn't.
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

They know nothing about life cycle analysis
Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03

Sometimes "progress" IS the increasing urgent issue facing us today.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

Know more? Well...that depends. If you mean know more stuff about things and all, then no. The capacity to know more about all of these ecological issues is limited by our attention, but perhaps that is the key as well. What we need to teach is how to attend to these issues and how to access the science and politics of these issues. We need to teach them how to jack into the Matrix, but without the nasty little plug in the back of the head.
Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03

I think this fits into the bigger issue of the purpose of schools, school structure and curricular transformation. I would guess that for the vast majority of schools, there is no way they can dive into an issue this complex with the current class/graduation requirements/assesment structure we have. (There are always exceptions to that, schools that are designed differently, or even individual charismatic, knowledgeable, and respected teachers that can pull this off, but in general - not so much.)
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

Absolutely true.
Jeremy Duncan on 2009-12-03

Which is why PARENTS and teachers need to teach children to BALANCE their use of technology with things that a screen cannot and should not replace.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

NCLB is a convenient whipping boy which needs a good whuppin', but the issue is whether most school are set up to help students do more than a cursory, artificial 55 minute or even unit length exploration. Our schools are designed to be shallow. Depth is gotten there through the struggle of iconoclastic teachers who know something more and better is needed.
Karl Fisch on 2009-12-03

@Russ - But then you also have to have a discussion about the environmental impact of "paperless." What's the environmental impact of all these computers and other devices, not to mention the energy required to run them?
Russ Goerend on 2009-06-19

Going paperless seems to be a natural first-step. (If it can be counted as a "step".) Just the idea of paperless is a discussion-starter with students.
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

This is why I'm turning into much more of an advocate for all teachers being environmentalists, or having an environmental bent to every aspect of the curriculum.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

Literacy is a word that has become over-freighted for me. And green? I don't even know what that signifies. It is a dead metaphor hiding a very lively idea--usufruct, that we only have a right to the fruits of the world, not the world itself. At its heart environmentalism is about the ethical question--how much is enough?
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

And the irony is that "green" is not always good. Greenwashing is making the harder conversations even more difficult.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

I will send a note Maggie Tsai to that effect, Will. Nice meta-work with this suggestion.
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

I really want tagging on the comment level right here.
Terry Elliott on 2009-12-03

What we need is the administrative capacity to organize schools on the fly in ways that address whatever needs students and teachers and communities express. Schools within schools rising up ad hoc to work on projects both long and short term, networked online and off, and then subsiding when work is done. I don't know of any one school capable of this kind of prestidigitation, but I see informal learning networks like Ravelry doing it everyday for its devoted band of knitters.
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

Why not the whole curriculum?
Will Richardson on 2009-06-18

Totally agree.

Educational Leadership:Teaching Social Responsibility:The Window into Green - The Diigo Meta page

Will Richardson's personal annotations on this page

Would you like to comment?

Top Tags

Check out another URL