Michigan's Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative

Exemplar Type: CASE STUDY
Title: Michigan's Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative - A Statewide Place-Based Education Effort to Connect Schools to Communities
Grades: 3-5, 6-8
Discipline: Interdisciplinary | Science, Social Studies, Literacy, Visual Arts
Submitted By: Greg Smith

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Summary: The Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative (GLSI) has for 10 years been engaged in the systematic introduction of place-based learning approaches with an environmental and ecojustice focus throughout the state of Michigan. It has sought to create strong partnerships between schools and local organizations and agencies with the intent of cultivating knowledgeable and active citizen stewards. By the 2015-2016 academic year, the GLSI had worked with teachers in 283 schools, engaging over 80,000 students in its projects, demonstrating how place-based approaches can be brought to scale in both rural and urban communities.

Big Ideas

• Humans are dependent on Earth's life-support systems

• Places are alive, unique and evolving. If humans want to flourish over time, our relationships with the places in which we live must be mutually beneficial

• Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

• Individual Rights are upheld by Collective Responsibilities. We must reconcile them when they come into conflict with one another

• We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

• We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don't do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

• Complex: Critical Thinking

• Mindful: Questioning

• Applied Knowledge -

• Strong Sense of Place

• Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

Dispositions

• Curious

• Efficacious

• Motivated

• Caring

• Collaborative

• Place/Community Conscious

Applications and Actions

• Create Social Learning Communities

• Engage in Dialogue

• Design to optimize health and adaptability

• Ask different questions and actively listen for the answer

• Serve your community

Community Connections

• Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

• Provide Internships for students

• Provide Independent and Curriculum Based Learning Sites (case studies, learning journeys, research sites)

Greater Egleston Community High School

Exemplar Type: CASE STUDY
Title: Greater Egleston Community High School
Grades: High School (9-12)
Discipline: Interdisciplinary | Social Studies
Submitted By: Greg Smith

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Summary: For a number of years, students at the Greater Egleston Community High School in Boston were provided with similar opportunities to affect public policy on environmental and social issues in their own community. Although the school’s focus has shifted during the past six or seven years, for more than a decade, teachers there sought to prepare its primarily Black and Latino students to become community leaders committed to enhancing the health and livability of Roxbury, one of Boston’s less affluent neighborhoods.

Big Ideas

• All systems have limits. Healthy systems live within their limits. Tap the power of limits

• The changes to the Earth's surface environments made by human activity are causing unintended consequences on the health and well-being of human and other life on Earth (proposed Anthropocene Epoch)

Higher Order Thinking Skills

• Emergent: Creative Thinking

• Complex: Critical Thinking

Dispositions

• Courageous

• Curious

• Efficacious

• Motivated

• Persevering

• Resilience

• Caring

• Collaborative

• Compassionate

• Ethical

• Place/Community Conscious

• Respectful

• Responsible

Applied Knowledge

• Inventing The Future

• Strong Sense of Place

• Healthy Commons

• System Dynamics and Change

• Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

Applications and Actions

• Engage in Dialogue

• Plan Scenarios

• Teach and Learn

• Contribute to the regenerative capacity of the systems upon which we depend

• Envision, strategize and plan

• Govern from the bottom up

• Lead by example

• Leave every place better than you found it

• Take responsibility for the effect you have on future generations

• Serve your community

Community Connections

• Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

• Provide Internships for students

PRISM - Aka'ula School

Exemplar Type: CASE STUDY
Title: PRISM: Aka'ula School
Grades: 3-5, 6-8
Discipline: Interdisciplinary | Math, Science, Social Studies, Literacy
Submitted By: Greg Smith

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Summary: Teachers Vicki Newberry and Dara Lukonen at the Aka’ula School on the island of Molokai in Hawaii have for more than a decade been involved in an effort to engage their upper elementary and middle school students in issues linked to the environmental and social health of their home place. Called Promoting Resolutions with Integrity for a Sustainable Molokai (PRISM), Newberry, Lukonen, and their students have investigated a range of issues including solid waste disposal at their school and on the island, the impact of ecotourism developments on habitat, bilge water releases, the effect of grazing ungulates on native species, the environmental consequences of disposable diapers, and the restoration of traditional Hawaiian fishponds.

Big Ideas

• Fairness applies to all. To us, to them and to the "we" that binds us all together

  Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

• We all depend on and are responsible for "the commons", i.e., what we share and hold in trust for future generations. Recognize and Protect the Commons

• Individual Rights are upheld by Collective Responsibilities. We must reconcile them when they come into conflict with one another

• We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback.

• We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don't do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

• Emergent: Creative Thinking

• Emergent: Design Thinking

• Complex: Critical Thinking

• Mindful: Questioning

• Mindful: Reflective Thinking

Dispositions

• Curious

• Efficacious

• Motivated

• Caring

• Collaborative

• Place/Community Conscious

Applied Knowledge

• Inventing The Future

• Laws and Principles that govern the physical and biological world

• Strong Sense of Place

• Cultures, Traditions, and Change

• Healthy Commons

• Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

• Multiple Perspectives

Applications and Actions

• Create Social Learning Communities

• Engage in Dialogue

• Lead by example

• Leave every place better than you found it

• Be inclusive

• Act wisely individually and collectively, with precaution and in context

• Listen to one another

• Serve your community

Community Connections

• Develop sustainable community visions and re-visions over time

• Students and teachers make authentic contributions to sustainable community development through service learning opportunities, project-based and place based learning opportunities for students that are laterally and vertically embedded in the core curriculum

• Provide Internships for students

• Make time to reflect on where we are, how we got here, how far we have come, how close we are to where we are going, and what we are going to do next

The Fish Game Facilitator's Guide

Exemplar Type: LESSON/ GAME
Title: The Fish Game
Grades: K-12, Undergrad, Grad, Doc, Post Doc
Discipline: Math Science, History/ Soc Studies
Submitted By: Jaimie Cloud

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The Fish Game is often used in schools and communities around the world to start the conversation about education for sustainability with students and stakeholders. The simulation invites us to 'go fishing' and the object of each game is to “have as many fish as possible by the end of 10 rounds”. The game teaches system dynamics, ecological principles, responsible citizenship and more!

The game is a role play simulation. It provides people an experience that demonstrates how easy it is to operate from our frames and not be able to see the feedback. This makes it difficult to take responsibility for the difference we make and in the context of interdependence--everything we do and don't do makes a difference. This explains why we are in an unsustainable situation at present. It also provides an opportunity to re-frame for a sustainable future and to think about our thinking and adjust thinking when necessary as a strategy for thriving over time.

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BENCHMARKS REPRESENTED IN THIS EXEMPLAR

Big Ideas

• Creativity (the generation of new forms) is a key property of all living systems and contributes to nature’s ability to sustain life

• Humans are dependent on Earth’s life-support systems

• All systems have limits. Healthy systems live within their limits. Tap the power of limits

• We are all in this together: We are interdependent on each other and on the natural systems

• A sustainable solution solves more than one problem at a time and minimizes the creation of new problems

• Quick fixes to complex problems tend to back fire

• The significant problems we face can’t be solved with the same thinking we used to create them. Our prior experiences with the world create cognitive frameworks (also known as mental models/maps) that inform what we can perceive. They shape our behavior and our behavior causes results. If we want to produce different results, it all begins with a change in thinking

• Fairness applies to all. To us, to them and to the “we” that binds us all together

• Sustain-ability requires individual and social learning and community practice

• We all depend on and are responsible for “the commons”, i.e., what we share and hold in trust for future generations. Recognize and Protect the Commons

• Individual Rights are upheld by Collective Responsibilities. We must reconcile them when they come into conflict with one another

• We must pay attention to the results of our thinking and behavior on the systems upon which we depend if we want to thrive over time. Read the Feedback

• We are all responsible for the difference we make. Everything we do and everything we don’t do makes a difference

Higher Order Thinking Skills

• Anticipatory: Futures Thinking

• Emergent: Lateral Thinking

• Complex: Critical Thinking

• Complex: [Living] Systems Thinking

• Mindful: Metacognition

• Mindful: Questioning, Mindful: Transference

Applied Knowledge

• Healthy Commons

• System Dynamics and Change

• Responsible Local and Global Citizenship

• Sustainable Economics

Dispositions

• Mindful

• Open Minded

• Persevering

• Collaborative

• Responsible

Applications and Actions

• Create Social Learning Communities

• Engage in Role-Playing, Learning Journeys, Simulations & Games

• Honor the specific knowledge and skills that each person and culture brings

• Build from successes, Learn from mistakes, develop strategies to improve, and apply what is learned

• Teach and Learn

• Ask different questions and actively listen for the answer

• Tap the power of limits and use constraints to drive creativity

• Take responsibility for the difference you make

• Embrace mutually beneficial rights of humanity and nature

• Take responsibility for the effect you have on future generations