Can We Do Better? Alternative Approaches to Special Education

 

 

 

 

Schools must strive to develop systems that serve the needs of all students.

Join us for a conference day highlighting Holistic Special Education.

Wednesday, May 22, Antioch University New England, Keene, NH

Featuring keynote speaker Kim John Payne, Director of the Center for Social Sustainability.

Followed by workshops and a panel discussion with leaders and practitioners in the field.

Topics will include:

• the changing landscape of special education
• what we know–mining our cognitive capital
• benefits and challenges of collaborative models
• transformative teaching and leading–from ablesim to inclusion
• creating holistic and healthy classrooms–holding space for diversity

See the complete schedule here.

To Register: visit our website at: www.antiochne.edu/acsr/events or call Peg Smeltz: 603.283.2301

 

Update On Goats Come to School

Here’s a followup to our last posting…

Congratulations to Patty Collins (AUNE ’11) and the Reading, Vermont Elementary School recipients of the 2013 Vermont Governor’s Awards for Environmental Excellence!

A ceremony will be held May 14 at the Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility’s spring conference. It’s wonderful to see teachers recognized for their work in educating for sustainability. Here’s a link to the whole story!

Goats come to School: An Educating for Sustainability Story with a Happy Ending

One day last summer Patty Collins, fifth-and-sixth-grade teacher at Reading (Vermont) Elementary School and an alumna of Antioch’s Educating for Sustainability MEd program, was walking her golden retriever past her school, when the dog waded into a sprawling patch of poison ivy. She realized that she had complained about the poison ivy for eleven years, ever since she had come to Reading. “No one has been able to solve that problem, because it borders an ecologically sensitive area, and chemicals were out of the question.”

The next day she asked her class a question: How can poison ivy be safely eradicated? Their reply: Blank looks.

Each day, she simply asked the same question. “After two weeks of no answers, they finally began to get embarrassed,” she said. Possible solutions trickled in. Collins asked them to analyze each solution for practicality and cost—their budget was $12 from the student activities fund. They considered black plastic, boiling water, vinegar and salt, none of which fit the criteria. Finally one student asked “Do goats eat poison ivy?”

Analysis showed that, if the goats were borrowed, it was affordable. “Within a week, we had three goats,” Collins said. The whole town went “goat crazy…”

Read about how the whole community got involved and the happy ending to Goats Come to School at this link!

School Jobs in Educating For Sustainability

In the USA independent schools are leading the way integrating sustainability into the infrastructure of their organizations, as evidenced by this recent job posting by St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH for an Environmental Steward. In addition to fostering environmentally-responsible actions the position includes making “… connections between environmental stewardship efforts and the broader ethical and spiritual motivations driving those efforts… and provide support for teachers seeking to introduce sustainability topics into classrooms.” It is encouraging that the St. Paul School acknowledge the link between environment, economics and equity in the job description and set the vision for integrating sustainability into the curriculum.

Public schools are starting to embrace sustainability, too. City school districts such as Cambridge, MA, and Denver, CO have their own Departments of Sustainability. Typically, these initiatives emphasize green practices such as recycling and energy reduction. But there is evidence that sustainability as an integrating concept is on the curriculum radar, too.

San Francisco Unified School District has created an administrative position for… Ecoliteracy Content Specialist! You can check out their inspiring work at Greening the Next Generation.

Ecoliteracy Content Specialist, Sarah Delaney, works closely with the Sustainability Director for the district and coordinates with many sustainability-related organizations in the Bay area. Sarah coordinates teacher professional development opportunities from Education Outside’s Cooking the Common Core to organizing the 1st Annual San Francisco Ecoliteracy for All Educator’s Conference.

The Ecoliteracy Content Specialist position is currently grant funded but may (hopefully) become part of the annual district budget and could become a model for other public school districts to foster sustainability as an integrating concept across facilities, curricula, and district policies.

West Coast Educating For Sustainabilty

It’s not easy making the transition from California springtime to New England mud season. I recently traveled from Los Angeles to Napa, visiting schools, meeting with teachers, and talking up Educating for Sustainability (EFS). I am pleased to report that EFS is alive and well in many California locales.

The Environmental Charter High School in Los Angeles integrates sustainability into every facet of their facility and curriculum they can manage, including repurposing a concrete patio into a green  space and using the detritus to build an outdoor amphitheater.

Place-based learning is at the core of a middle school project in Santa Cruz where students designed and installed mosaics depicting local flora and fauna on a bridge over the local watershed and at Washington Elementary in Santa Barbara where students’ ceramic tiles create a backdrop for the school garden.

Fifth and sixth graders at Pacific Elementary School in Davenport work in teams to prepare locally sourced food for the school’s daily lunch program.

School gardens are ubiquitous in California. From the Open Alternative School in Santa Barbara to the urban green spaces in San Francisco, schools are integrating gardens into the curriculum.  With the help of organizations like Education Outside a first grade class pulls up garden plants to learn about drawing science diagrams, third graders harvest kale to crisp and snack on, and afterschool programs explore life cycles by tending native plantings.

Systemic change is evident through the work of organizations like the Center for Ecoliteracy and the commitment of the San Francisco Unified School District to Greening the Next Generation and creating an administrative position for… Ecoliteracy Content Specialist!

Check out these innovative EFS schools and organizations through the links at the top of this blog page.

Nature Preschools and Forest Kindergartens

Starting Off Right: Creating Nature Preschools and Forest Kindergartens

Saturday, March 2, 2013 Antioch University New England

with Ken Finch, Green Hearts Institute for Nature in Childhood

Nature preschools and forest kindergartens combine the strength of environmental education and early childhood education, nurturing healthy and holistic child development while simultaneously fostering life-long conservation values.

This full-day workshop will address the nitty-gritty planning necessary to get a nature preschool/forest kindergarten up and running, and off on a successful path. We’ll focus on the creation of business plans, including:

• simple market analyses;
• promotion;
• site and faculty needs;
• staffing requirements and options; and
• the crucial income and expense projections.

We’ll also review fundraising options and basic risk management issues.

Participants will draft a three-year budget for their operation, rough-up a promotional flyer and/or website, and prepare and practice persuasive verbal descriptions and “sales pitches” for their school. We’ll allocate plenty of time to share your own experiences and ideas, and will take a close look at existing models that have proven successful in the U.S.

Ken Finch is the founder and President of Green Hearts Institute for Nature in Childhood located in Omaha, Nebraska. Green Hearts is a small conservation organization focused on restoring the bonds between children and nature. In that role, Ken speaks, teaches, writes, and consults about nature play and nature-based preschools.

Ken has been working in environmental education for 38 years, and holds a masters degree in that field from Antioch New England. He has served as the Director of two of the country’s largest nature centers, has been a senior manager at two children’s museums, ans was the Minnesota State Director for the National Audubon Society. Ken’s responsibilities have included supervision of two nature/science preschools, and he has assisted with the planning and development of several others. Ken is a former national President of the Association of Nature Center Administrators, and has been active with numerous other nonprofit boards.

Register online in January at:     www.antiochne.edu/acsr/events/

Look, Don’t Touch: The Problem with Environmental Education

by David Sobel

THE KIDS HAVE BEEN UP since seven-thirty playing computer games and watching cartoons. What a travesty for them to be inside on such a beautiful day, you harrumph to yourself. On the refrigerator, you notice the schedule of events from the nearby nature center. “Let’s Get Face to Face with Flowers,” it beckons. Just the thing! It’s a sparkly May morning. Buds are bursting. There’s a warm breeze full of the aromatic scent of the woods just waking up.

You trundle the kids into the minivan. They despondently consent. “Do we have to do a program? Programs are boring,” the older one complains. But as soon as you pull into the parking lot at Happy Hills Nature Center, their faces brighten. They fling the sliding door open and scamper down through the blossom-filled meadow to the shore of the pond. Ross, age seven, pulls off his sneakers and wades in, bent over searching for frogs. Amanda, age ten, plops down and starts making a dandelion tiara. What a good decision, you think to yourself.

Terri, the smiley naturalist wearing the official Happy Hills insigniaed staff shirt, saunters over. “Here for the flower program?” she chirps. “We’re meeting up in the Cozy Corner room to get started.”

Ross asks, “Can Freddie come too?” holding up the fat green frog he has befriended.

Terri’s bright face darkens a bit. “Sorry. Freddie needs to stay in the pond. Did you know the oils from your hands can make Freddie sick?”

You can find out what happens next in this story and read the whole article as it originally appeared in the July/August 2012 issue of Orion magazine.

And listen to David Sobel’s interview about the Look, Don’t Touch phenomenon on Public Radio International’s Environmental News Magazine – Living on Earth with Bruce Gellerman.

Then “Leave a Comment” to further the discussion!