“Eco-education doesn’t have to be expensive,” wrote Daniel Stone in the September 15, 2008 Newsweek magazine. In his article, “Getting an Early Start,” he described how environmental learning is not just about climate change or the “plight” of the earth. Innovative teachers with “green lesson plans” focus on the natural world as a basis for their lessons in a variety of subjects.
Stone gives an example of a classroom studying a stream by incorporating the study of language, math and social studies. He also pointed out studies from the State Education and Environment Roundtable reporting, “students exposed to a nature-based curriculum score higher more than 90 percent of the time than students taught the same subjects in the classroom out of a textbook.”
One of the most cost-effective ways to incorporate green lessons into the curriculum can be done through Project Learning Tree (www.plt.org), which is sponsored by the American Forest Foundation. Through this program, educators can be trained in green-based teaching. They attend a workshop and receive a guidebook of lesson plans. An example of one lesson plan deals with analyzing water samples students would obtain from a nearby river or stream. Another lesson plan focuses on the history of wildlife in the students’ region.
The mission of Project Learning Tree (PLT) is to “use the forest as a ‘window’ on the world to increase students’ understanding of our environment; stimulate students’ critical and creative thinking; develop students’ ability to make informed decisions on environmental issues; and instill in students the commitment to take responsible action on behalf of the environment.” This sounds much more complex that it is when lessons are used by teachers in the classroom.
PLT is an award winning education program with 120 state coordinators working with teachers in all grades. PLT claims to help students learn how to think, not what to think, about the environment. The lesson plans go beyond topics like forests, wildlife and water, in order to explore concepts dealing with the environment like community planning and waste management.
In Stone’s Newsweek article he described a turn-around situation attributed to PLT in Oil City Elementary School in Louisiana. Principal Thomas Irvin’s school was close to being shut down because of low academic performance of the students before he trained his whole teaching staff in PLT and built three outdoor classrooms. Enrollment in his school spiked up almost a third, and test scores were raised to one of the highest in the district. Irvin said, “Our students are good stewards of the Earth, but more than that, we really train them to be good citizens and good thinkers.”
Environmental education is more than a green lesson plan for the earth; it also seems to be a green lesson plan for true learning processes for students.
