In 2010 when I stepped down from my long-term position as principal of the K-12 Head-Royce in Oakland, I set out on a journey to help grow greener, more sustainable schools. Aware of all that I needed to learn, I visited well over 125 public and private schools serving K-12 students, a number of colleges […]
(Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood ~ Nina Simone) My esteemed colleagues here at Ten Strands have been putting out some great blogs for a few months now, as you may know. Initially they encouraged me to join the fray, but they finally gave up after several polite (and not-so-polite) declinations. Chalk it up to shyness […]
We’ve just completed our first full school year of partnering with the Office of Education and the Environment (OEE) at CalRecycle and the results are in! Our focus last year was to increase awareness of the Education and Environment Initiative Curriculum (EEIC) among California teachers, curriculum leaders, and administrators, and encourage more teachers to introduce […]
I know wildfires are good for a forest, and play a necessary natural role in maintaining our ecosystem. However, as I think about the magnificent Purisima Creek redwoods towering over me during a mountain bike trek last weekend, or a dear friend who lost her family home to the Beaver Creek wildfire last August, I […]
It was Mr. DeSanto’s biology class in 12th grade that first had me in awe over the intricate systems prevalent in all plants and animals. For me, science had always been a routine class where I did what I needed to get a good grade, but had no passion for what I was learning. Things […]
The 1983 release of the National Commission on Excellence in Education report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, marks the starting point of the education reform movement that today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future will drive the functioning of every public school classroom in America—instruction targeted toward student proficiency with specific […]
Catching up on emails recently, I came across a link titled “How Wolves Change Rivers”. I thought, “Come on. How could a wolf change a river?” Well, it turns out that the video unveiled a phenomenon called “trophic cascade.” Think avalanche. It’s an ecological process of destruction that starts by getting rid of the top trophic […]
I have attended the Bioneers conference in San Rafael, CA every year since 2002 because it motivates me to act. I squeezed my first Bioneers conference into a weekend when I was in the middle of exams for my MBA program and could only get a ticket for the tent outside, so I watched the […]
UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science recently released “A Field at Risk: The Impact of COVID-19 on Environmental and Outdoor Science Education.”