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BOCES Hosts Executive Briefing for School Leaders on Sustainability Education
 | | Susan Howard (left), principal of Briarcliff Middle School, and Dr. Barbara Ulm, principal of Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School in Croton, play the sustainability "fishing" game during the workshop. |
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Area assistant superintendents, middle school administrators, and teacher leaders attended an executive briefing for the Education for Sustainability Curriculum Development Project at Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES this week. The workshop is one event kicking off a multi-year BOCES project to develop a K-12 Education for Sustainability Curriculum, which will be piloted in grades six through eight in the 2008-09 school year.
Jaimie P. Cloud, president of The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education and an international consultant, led the executive briefing, and she emphasized the importance of encouraging students to think outside the box on the topic of sustainability. "It's not formulaic," she said. "Sustainability requires deep thinking."
To learn more about the issues and rationale for sustainability education, participants had the opportunity to experience a simulation illustrating the need for resource conservation. In the simulation, entitled the "Fish Game," participants were placed in teams and given 20 fish for their "ponds" along with the pond's "replenishment rate." The object of the game was to have as many fish as possible after 10 rounds of fishing. Most teams found it difficult to play the 10 rounds without running out of fish. Ms. Cloud, who has facilitated this game in international forums, explained that participants initially fail to complete the task because they have to learn to think creatively and come up with new ways to work together to sustain resources. This simulation, along with other activities during the day, helped participants to begin to develop sustainable 21st century thinking, behaviors, and strategies.
Games aside, Ms. Cloud talked about the disturbing fact that we are using our natural resources 20 percent faster than we are replenishing them, which is why sustainability education is so vital. "It's important that you are here today," Ms. Cloud told the curriculum and instruction leaders, "because just like on an airplane, when the flight attendant tells us that if the oxygen mask drops, we have to use it on ourselves before giving it to a child, we, too, have to breathe in the information on sustainability first before we can share it with our students." The project will continue during the spring and summer when teams of teachers from Putnam and Westchester County school districts will work together to develop a state of the art, interdisciplinary, web-based Education for Sustainability curriculum.
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