Every year all of Carmel Middle School’s seventh grade students participate in the Monterey Bay Outdoor Education (MBOE) program. The main goals of this place-based program are to connect students to their local environment and increase their understanding of the interconnection between humans and nature.
It’s January in the quiet mountain town of Greenville, California. This is the heart of the Lost Sierra; an impressive expanse of rolling mountains and vast forest that are as remote as they are beautiful.
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.” ~ Steve Jobs In 2017, I had the very great pleasure of meeting Dr. V. Ram Ramanathan, Distinguished Professor of Climate Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (Scripps), following a featured presentation he did in Los Angeles […]
It is not easy to find a healthy habitat on our school campus. Our campus is a bit of a concrete jungle. Concrete sidewalks connect the buildings that lead to an expansive concrete play area which is surrounded with, you guessed it, more concrete. Beyond the concrete are a few green spaces. There is a […]
Paramount Unified School District (PUSD) is progressing toward the full implementation of California Next Generation Science Standards (CA NGSS) and the Environmental Principles & Concepts (EP&Cs) throughout grades K–12. This progress is the result of a strategic district-level plan for implementation that includes: multiple professional learning opportunities for all teachers and school leaders; the development […]
Touring the Port of Los Angeles, engineering transportation corridor models, investigating the environmental impact of the war in Vietnam, and designing a student webpage to highlight the effects of climate change and globalization on endangered species were a few of the ways that teachers recently explored classroom applications for California’s Environmental Principles and Concepts (EP&Cs) […]
When I think of environmental literacy as a kinder[garten] teacher, I carefully look at how I will provide my students with a strong base to feel comfortable exploring their environment to not only gain an appreciation of their surroundings, but to understand the crucial role they play in caring for it. So said one of […]
In October, the CA STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art Math) Symposium was held in Long Beach, CA. Leaders from two school districts and one county office of education presented on behalf of the California Environmental Literacy Initiative. Their session entitled “Advancing Equity and Cultural Relevance in Science Education: Developing Environmental Literacy to Increase Student Engagement, […]