Building a Thoughtful Environmental Program

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Rita Howard, Orca's Garden and Environmental Education Coordinator, has been thinking a lot about music lately.  Developing a coherent environmental studies program for a K-8 school with 15 classrooms is a lot like preparing to perform a  concert.  Rita likens her work to  that of a musician who has to pick the music, rehearse, tune her instrument, coordinate with other musicians and experience the acoustics of the performance hall.

"Developing an environmental program and curriculum involves much more than appearing before children in a classroom.  I believe that the environmental crisis in the world today requires that we give this subject area serious attention.  It is important to design and build a thoughtful program that makes a significant contribution towards long-term solutions to environmental problems."

So, while Rita has been providing relevant, hands-on environmental experiences to  students at Orca, she spends a lot of her time working with staff and parents laying the foundation for an integrated  environmental learning program.

Questions that guide this work include:

· What personal character traits and culture, relative to the environment, do we want all children to leave Orca with?

· How do we cultivate these character traits and this culture in our children?

· What behaviors do we want our children to exhibit, relative to their environment, over their lifetime?

· What core environmental issues do we want all children to be aware of?

· How do we school our children to recognize the circumstances and factors that lead to environmental degradation?

· What can we teach children to actively do now to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem?

· How can we empower our children to act as a role model and teacher of others?

· At what age and grade level do we introduce the various elements of our environmental studies program?

· How do we create the connections between the state-mandated curriculua and our environmental studies program?

· How do we create relevance for environmental studies across the curriculum -- it isn't just about science?

· What are the resources in our school and community that can help us accomplish our goals?

Figuring out the answers to some of these questions and trying them out in the classroom may potentially create long-term solutions to our environmental problems.  As Rita sees it,"our contribution will be to have educated and raised a generation that can do better than we have done."