Sustainability
Sustainability means that we meet our needs without limiting the ability of future
generations to meet their needs. -- Definition from "It's All Connected" by Wheeler,
Wheeler and Church
How can we educate students about sustainability?
Students often do not understand their needs and how these needs affect their environment.
A better understanding of our environment should begin with a familiar environment.
For students, their schoolyard is a place where they spend a lot of time but don’t
often investigate. Even the most meager schoolyards in the city have communities
that can be studied. The soil, lawn, trees and shrubs themselves as well as the
many arthropods that make these environments home can be the subjects of student
inquiry and a means to understand the ecology of their schoolyard. When students
understand the schoolyard as an environment capable of supporting life, concrete
connections to larger ecosystems that we depend upon, for example ecosystems that
supply our fresh water and food, can be made. In SEE
we have protocols on the study of pollinators. Students investigate the pollinators
in their schoolyards by comparing the number of insect visitors to different types
of flowers. Connections to the human food supply can be made by highlighting agricultures
dependence upon pollinators for successful crops.
Through curriculum and teacher professional development
SEE creates links between the schoolyard and the importance of the organisms
living in the schoolyard. The lessons are designed to lead the student into conducting
investigations of their own or to directly highlight a principle of sustainability.
Each lesson contains information and examples that create frameworks which connect
the human welfare and the environment as dependent upon one another.