Teaching Towards Green Schools
Transforming Kā12 Education through Sustainable Practices
Linda H. Plevyak
- 198 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Teaching Towards Green Schools
Transforming Kā12 Education through Sustainable Practices
Linda H. Plevyak
About This Book
This engaging and timely book showcases practical ways that PreKā12 teachers and school leaders can create and implement sustainability-focused projects and practices in their classrooms and schools, helping promote a healthy, sustainable environment and curriculum for students and leading the way towards becoming a green school.
Sharing real-world case studies and detailed walk-throughs of sustainable schools in action ā from Madison, Alabama, to Bali, Indonesia ā author Linda H. Plevyak lays out the benefits, principles and practices of creating a sustainable school from beginner classroom projects like creating a garden, recycling and composting to more complex and school-wide initiatives like energy audits, creating an environmental management system, engaging with policy and building and leveraging community partnerships. Plevyak highlights sustainable practices that can be developed with little to no budget and focuses on those that support the development of critical thinking skills, promote project-based learning and consider the environment as a learning tool, incorporating sustainability as a natural progression of the learning process.
The book outlines extensive resources teachers and schools can use to embed sustainability in their programs and curriculum, offering teachers, school leaders and policy makers the tools they need to provide this generation of students with the knowledge and skills to create a more sustainable world.
Frequently asked questions
Information
1Introduction to Green Schools
āI donāt want to protect the environment. I want to create a world where the environment does not need protecting.āUnknown
Vignette
Chapter Objectives
- Discuss the evolution of green schools.
- Focus on historical aspects of environmental education (EE), sustainability and their connection to green schools.
Green School Movement
The Emergence of Green Schools
Vienna International School, Vienna, Austria Promoting SDGs
- Poverty eradication. Poverty reduction is inextricably linked to health and sustainable development.
- Sustainable consumption and production.
- Governance.
- Urban development.
- Environmental sustainability (UN, 2021).
- Ensure that participants are engaged in the learning/teaching process
- Empower participants to take informed decisions and actions on real life sustainability issues
- Encourage participants to work together actively and involve their communities in collaborative solutions
- Support participants to examine their assumptions, knowledge, and experiences, in order to develop critical thinking, and to be open to change
- Encourage participants to be aware of cultural practices as an integral part of sustainability issues
- Encourage participants to share inspirational stories of their achievements, failures, and values, to learn from them, and to support each other
- Continuously explore, test, and share innovative approaches, methodologies, and techniques
- Ensure that continuous improvements through monitoring and evaluation are central to our programs (FEE, 2001, para. 1).
- Professional development
- Globalization of environmental education standards guidelines
- Legislation and national-level policies that support environmental education
- Access to effective and promising practices
- Research and evaluation
- How environmental education can best address key issues, such as climate change, water shortages, and loss of biodiversity (2021)
Importantly, major public school districts such as Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Fairfax County, Houston, Philadelphia, and New York City are using Eco Schools to encourage students to participate in implementing sustainability goals by conducting energy audits, tracking recycling performance, planting trees and gardens for climate mitigation and more. The fact that NWF Eco Schools U.S.A. is part of an international network of Eco Schools also helps connect these schools with green schools in other nations. (Coyle, 2020, p. 397)