Reflections on the Better Living Show

The 2009 Better Living Show (BLS) took place this year from Friday March 27th through Sunday March 29th. As a project of a non-profit organization, SOSI was offered a free 10' x 10' booth space for the event. Both Brett (on left) and Sarie (on right) staffed the booth all weekend long and helped answer questions from the public about what SOSI does and how they can help be a part of the effort.

In the first picture Brett is standing just to the right of our sponsor poster which listed all of our financial supporters of the organization at the Platinum, Gold, and Silver levels.

In the second picture Sarie is showing off our EcoPrizes which served as an additional bonus for those that donated to the Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative.

All together we had over 30 people sign-up for our newsletter, raised some money for SOSI, and most importaltly increased our visibility to about 2000 new people.

रेगिओनल इन्नोवेशन फॉरम

REGIONAL INNOVATION FORUM, SUSTAINABLE SCHOOLS TRACK
Friday, March 27 at the Expo Center इन Portland
http://www.blueoceanevents.org/bo/

The Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative invites you to join us for the Sustainable Schools track of the Regional Innovation Forum: Sustainable School Systems; Creating Agents of Change.

Does our school system provide the education needed for our society to become sustainable? The K-12 infrastructure accommodates 20% of Oregon?s population daily, with corresponding impacts to sustainability. It gives every one of us the foundation for our future life, and establishes the starting point at which young adults enter our colleges, universities and businesses. We all have a stake in the direction of our schools, so everyone?s voice is needed to define the strategies that will make our schools the country?s sustainability
leaders.

Please come to learn, support the effort, and contribute your knowledge!

The day begins with a bus tour providing a first hand examination of local innovative school sustainability examples. We?ll visit Rosa Parks Elementary, da Vinci Art Middle School and Catlin Gable School and learn from Growing Gardens too. Hear from the people who planned
them about the leading edge sustainable features at each school, the key partnerships involved, and how the students interact with them. We?ll start you thinking about what you find. Will it lead to the future we need?

In the afternoon you?ll hear from business, school and school district sustainability leaders, and YOU. We?ll examine what a successful sustainable school system might include, consider what?s needed to achieve this vision, and we?ll explore what?s needed for that education to provide not only a theoretical understanding, but also to result in changed attitudes and behaviors.

The session will conclude with a probing discussion, led by former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, about what role schools and education should play in meeting state goals for sustainability, and how to achieve that role. Prepare to be inspired and have your
assumptions about school sustainability and the role of schools in society greatly expanded!

Sustainable school buildings

Have you been searching for a really good article on sustainable school building design?  One that addresses LEED standards but goes above any beyond?  I found a good one!  It actually was written in 2006 but it is still very much applicable today.  The article "Sustainable K-12 Schools" (found here) is written by the Leonardo Academy, based in Madison, WI.  

They note the following elements of sustainable design and operations that have direct effects on student performance:

• daylighting
• thermal comfort
• indoor air quality
• acoustics

Topic for discussion: When it comes to sustainable school buildings, what is most important to you?  

Students for Solar Schools

Students at Westlake High School (in Westlake Village, California) are starting to make some big waves-- solar waves that is.  They created the "Students for Solar Schools Initiative" (SSS), a student-run campaign to "engage schools in the renewable energy movement."  Since their recent start, two other California schools as well as a high school in New York have joined their movement.  

The SSS program was featured on the website Treehugger as well as Discovery channel's Planet Green website.    Students for Solar Schools Initiative also has a Facebook page with over 380 members.  

Here at the Sustainable Oregon Schools Initiative we are looking for ways to get high school students more actively involved in their sustainability efforts too.  That's why we also created a SOSI Facebook page.  Our hope is that high school students across the state can use our Facebook page as a starting point to get the conversation rolling about engaging their administration with sustainability efforts, and work with each other to see their progress.  The idea is still in the initiative stages and we have not done any outreach to Oregon high schools yet.  

Topic for Discussion: 

• Are you a teacher at a high school and would like to be involved in either the SSS project or the SOSI Facebook page?  Let us know!
  
• Are you a high school student and want to be more involved?  Share your voice!  
• Are you an administrator that wants your school to be more involved in grass-roots efforts?  Explain why!  

  

Early Childhood and Sustainability

Recently someone wrote us to ask why we did not include Pre-K in our "K-12 schools" mission.  Is Pre-K any less worthy when they are housed in the same building as Kindergarten, First, and Second-graders? he asked us.  So here at SOSI we got thinking.  We asked each other and we asked our Steering Committee what we should do about this.  Do we change our website to now say "Pre-K-12?"  It just didn't seem feasible.  

But what I can offer is some validated research (and my perspective) on the matter.  Here is what other's have to say about sustainability in Early Childhood.  Any further thoughts are inspired and/or credited to "The contribution of early childhood education to a sustainable society," edited by Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson and Yoshie Kaga, published by UNESCO-France in 2008.  

(or found here: www.ecdgroup.com/docs/lib_005710328.pdf)

There are several things to note:

1. Importance of local relevance:  young children especially need locality in order to create meaning and relevance. 
2. Education for sustainable development should start in early childhood as that is where we develop the values and core beliefs that shape the rest of our lives. 
3. Some educators fear that teaching young children about sustainability opens them up to the "doom and gloom" of our potential future.  But this is not necessarily true.  It also means making sure children play outdoors and discover the beauty of nature.  It means helping children understand that we are all inter-connected (ie: intercultural education).  And it means using the 7 R's (this is the first time I have actually heard this one!): reduce, reuse, recycle, respect, repair, reflect, and refuse.  

While I admit to having not read the entire paper (it is over 100 pages long..) what I do gather from it is that yes, sustainability in early childhood education is important.  But what we do here at SOSI can often be transferred to the ECE practices.  It is entirely possible to take the SOSI website and make it relate to our youngest students.  For example, (and this comes from the resources section of our website) food offered in schools must support student health, limit the use of toxic chemicals on the grass our students play, and the air in which they breathe, and the schools & community should operate as an integrated whole.  

 So while we will not be changing our website and flyers to specifically say "pre-K" or "pre-school" we do not intend by any means to leave this out.  Our children are our future and we support any efforts of those working towards sustainability in early childhood.  

Topic for Discussion: 

Perhaps what we can do is this:  If you are an early childhood learning center and your school has done a significant job in educating your students, teachers, parents and/or community about sustainability, send us your School Story.  A template can be found by going to www.sustainableschools.org/action/stories.htm   We are happy to share your success on our website!  

 

Discovering Edutopia (Technology and Sustainability)

After listening to an NPR spot, I decided to check out the website for Edutopia, a website from the George Lucas Educational Foundation (who knew that he did more than Star Wars?  And that his site has been around since 1991!).  To my delight I found the website interesting and worth the half hour of time I spend perusing it.  

Edutopia uses six core concepts that create their comprehensive vision for a new world of learning and "a place where children become lifelong learners and develop the technical, cultural, and interpersonal skills to succeed in the 21st century."  

• Project Learning (long-term and student-centered)
• Social and Emotional Learning (cooperative learning to build character and teamwork)
• Technology Integration (using technology to create personalized learning)
• Teacher Development (coaching and guiding with the human touch)
• Comprehensive Assessment (measuring social, emotional, and academic achievement)

I then went on a crusade to find out what the website had in terms of sustainability education and here are some of the highlights of my search:

Sustainability-themed video games come to the classroom!  

I know, sounds kind of scary right?  Allowing students to play video games in the classroom?  I decided I shouldn't knock it before I tried it.  The game, PowerUp, is put out by IBM and it's pretty sophisticated.  When I taught middle school, sometimes I'd let my students play this McDonald's supply and demand game and they loved it.  But let me tell you, PowerUp makes my McDonald's game look pathetic.  The graphics are amazing, the music is engaging, and I was excited to play even after the promo video.  But what I believe to be the important part about all of this is that it does the following things: 1) it makes learning fun.  That's not to say that you can only have fun playing video games, but that playing games IS fun to do, and 2) there is a social aspect tied into the game.  Get a bunch of kids in a room and I guarantee they'll be talking to their friends about it.  The combination of a fun + social + educational game is a win in my book.  

 Reading, Writing, Recycling: One Oregon School is Making the Planet a Better Place

Hey, hey, Clackamas High School made it into the website in this great article.  Did you know that Clackamas HS was one of the first green schools in the nation?   Yep, the school's silver level LEED building has earned them praise due to their abundance of natural light, recycled ceiling tiles and plastic toilet partitions, solar panels, pollution solutions,  and recycling efforts. 

There's plenty more to learn about this website and sustainability efforts in the cyber world and in Oregon.  

Topic for discussion:

Do you think allowing students to play a "sustainability" video game will make a difference in their day-to-day interactions, or will they see it as "just fun" and leave it at that? 

 

Change is here -- but is the outlook for K-12 bright?

With our new president Barack Obama now in office, I am hopeful that change is now here-- and that sustainability will continue to be on the forefront.  The website www.change.org is a social entrepreneur venture from San Francisco that has gotten major publicity recently.  Their campaign "Ideas for Change in America" fueled grassroots participation with the promise and hope that these ideas would reach President Obama with the people's concerns.  The campaign received almost 8,000 ideas, more than 600,000 votes, and more than 175,000 participants.  

The good news is that after a long standstill at position number 12, "Develop and Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability" pushed it's way to a Top 10 idea.  Ok, so what exactly does this plan mean and how will it be used?

The idea for "Develop and Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability" stems from the 1992 (and 2002) UN Rio Earth Conference, because uh-oh, although the United States said that we'd reduce our environmental impact, the truth is we haven't done enough.  

The US Citizens Network for Sustainable Development (see the website here), sponsor of the strategy, suggested the following things to help achieve the Strategy*: 

• green building practices; transitioning to renewable energy; protecting and restoring the natural environment; limiting toxic chemicals; investing in all types of green jobs; adopting sustainable business practices; educating for sustainable development; ensuring that all people's basic human needs can be met; and integrating artists, engineers, educators, and restoration scientists on infrastructure, restoration, and sustainable community projetcts; etc. 

These are all great things, but here is what I wonder.  Obama has already announced his education plan and sustainability is no where to be seen.   While the first priority for K-12 education is to reform No Child Left Behind, I don't see any mention of No Child Left Inside (NCLI) as a possible--or additional alternative.  There is nothing about sustainability curriculum in the "Make Math and Science a National Priority" or in mention of teacher preparedness and support.  

And while we have heard great promise for millions of new Green Jobs, it is worth mentioning that most of those jobs seem to be in  energy efficiency, home weatherizing, and clean coal. (See Obama's Energy & Environment plan here).  

I do still have hope for change in K-12 education.  It's wonderful that the National Plan for Sustainability made it to the Top 10 of our nation's concerns.  But I have to wonder to what that will really translate.  

Topic for Discussion: Even though I can't find it mentioned anywhere, do you think that Sustainability in the K-12 sector will be adequately addressed?  Is my outlook more pessimistic than it ought to be?  What do you think?  Share your comments now!       

* Italics my own