Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

Happy Monday! We welcome back our friends from Unity Charter School, a tuition-free, public K – 8 charter school in Morris Township. In case you missed last week’s post, Unity is unique because it combines New Jersey core curriculum requirements with a focus on teaching students the principles of sustainability, ecology and diversity to celebrate and protect the planet and all its inhabitants.

What’s it like to be a teacher at this remarkable little school? Julia Kelly weighs in with her perpective today:

By Julia Kelly

I have been teaching the multi-age third and fourth grade learning group at Unity Charter school since 2002. While the previous building on Speedwell Avenue was quaint and homey, as we grew larger it became a cramped and challenging environment in which to teach and learn. It was particularly challenging to teach in a room with only a sky light and no windows. Now that we have moved to the new location, my classroom has six wonderful windows! Not only is the space much bigger, but it is wonderful and bright. The students are growing plants in every window. We have some great old hardwood and pine trees right outside, and we have hung many bird feeders. It was thrilling watching the birds all winter long.

One of the most important aspects of Unity is to teach the importance of protecting and improving the environment by educating our students on the principles of sustainability. There are many reasons why teaching at Unity has been such a wonderful experience for me these past nine years. Unity is a place that I have been able to share my passion for protecting the earth with young minds and this has impacted my life in many positive ways. I like the way we look at the whole child and are able to teach with a hands-on approach.

From a young age I have felt very connected to the earth. At the age of sixteen I designed my own herb garden in the back yard of our house in Califon, N.J. It was a successful first attempt at gardening. I have had a vegetable or flower garden just about every year since then. I love to share my passion for gardening with my students.

I have written many Education for Sustainability curriculum units with the help of the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education. There are two units that I am particularly proud of having written. The first is an Efs unit on Endangered Species of New Jersey. With a combination of science, language arts, technology and art the students produce wonderful final projects around this subject area. They make their own book and sculptures of their chosen endangered species. We invite the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey come to our school to deepen the knowledge that students gain through their research of endangered species. The class then raises money for the foundation, and we adopt an endangered species with our donation.

Another curriculum unit that I am proud of is the Native and Invasive Plant Species of New Jersey. This unit is also multi-disciplinary; bringing together art, science, technology and language arts throughout the lesson plan. I also take the students on a field trip to the Tourne Park to see the native plant species garden. We finalize this unit with a power point presentation and class book that serves as a legacy project for future third and fourth grade classes.

Unity is an ideal place for me to share my love of the planet with young students. The mission is very close to my heart, and I think that makes it more genuine for the students as well. I feel extremely fortunate to be a part of this very special learning environment. •

This series continues next Monday

Images: Unity School students and their garden

Sustainable Jersey held their awards ceremony earlier this week to recognize the 38 towns who achieved Sustainable Jersey certification in 2010 by meeting the program’s certification requirements. Four of those communities surpassed all others by meeting the advanced requirements of the new Silver Level of certification. Was your town one of the 38? You can find out here.

Remarkably, 315 (56%) of New Jersey towns have registered with the program and are pursuing the certification. This is quite a testament to Sustainable Jersey as a useful framework for New Jersey towns to work towards a more sustainable future; it is also a testament to the desire of New Jerseyans to make their communities more livable.

As Sustainable Jersey expands the scope of its actions that municipalities can take to become certified, Dodge has encouraged program leaders to consider the role of creativity in community building. An Arts, Culture and Historical Preservation stakeholder group has formed and is working on arts and education programming opportunities for Sustainable Jersey that include linkages to Arts Builds Communities, concepts like arts as an economic engine of redevelopment, the Cloud Institute‘s work on educating for sustainability, and the NJ Learns program. It is hard to separate the themes of creativity and sustainability, as we know we need innovative minds to develop holistic, systems to drive solutions to today’s social, economic and environmental issues.

As the stakeholder group continues its work, Dodge and the Sustainable Jersey team also know that we need to shine light on places where the community has become a canvas for sustainable solutions and where community building-artists have expressed their vision for what is possible. This thinking led to the inaugural Sustainable Jersey Creative Community award.

Dodge was thrilled to help bestow this honor to Galloway Township. The Go Green Galloway team has created a wide spectrum of entry points to their Sustainable Jersey work. From the “recirculation committee,” which helps community members find matches for the re-use of household items, to the native plant landscaping committee, Galloway is pushing the envelope of community engagement. They also included a public art project at the heart of their community garden project, and they transformed a drainage basin into a habitat friendly, recreation rich lake setting (Patriots Lake).

The most ingenious community engagement strategy, however, may have been the media project that the high school took on in support of the re-usable bag campaign. Students created inspiring messages and have become a key partner in the success of the campaign.

There is an interesting footnote to this story.

At the same time that the concept of creativity was being celebrated in a sustainability forum, a team from Dodge and the Municipal Land Use Center of the College of New Jersey (the academic partner in Sustainable Jersey) were injecting concepts of sustainability at the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma. We look forward to reviewing what we learned at the conference to help advance the integration of these themes in New Jersey.

Welcome to the fourth installment of “New Jersey Learns Mondays.” The reflections and stories from K-12 teachers and community leaders who have completed The Cloud Institute’s unique leadership training program “New Jersey Learns: Schools and Communities Learn Together for a Sustainable Future” are showing us that it is possible to lead the shift to a sustainable future.

If you are new to the Dodge blog, you can read the first three installments of the New Jersey Learns series here (Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith),  here (Winnie Fatton of Sustainable Jersey), and here (Caitlin Wargo of Far Hills Country Day School). Today, we hear from David Hallowell, President of Sustainable West Milford who has been training with New Jersey Learns for two years now.

From Action to Thinking and Back Again!

When I first learned of the NJ LEARNS Educating for Sustainability opportunity, we were well on our way to making changes in West Milford. We had established a nonprofit called Sustainable West Milford and grown our membership from 6 to over 400 people in just one year. We had a variety of action-oriented and educational programs including: monthly educational presentations; “Buy Local” campaigns; an organic community garden: and an annual GreenFest.

We were excited with the prospect of learning more, getting some new tools, and making some connections with other groups around the state to help move our efforts forward. The NJ Learns program delivered all that and more. I was in the first year of the training, and even continued my training for a second year! Not that I’m all that remedial, (well, maybe a little!) , but that fact is, I learned even more in the second year. And more importantly, I learned different things that have shaped the way I think about sustainability.

After the first year of Educating for Sustainability (EfS), my focus was on using the wonderful tools and information provided to better engage community members and convince them of the need to change their actions, for as Jaimie Cloud points out, “everything you do or DON’T do, makes a difference.” After the second year of the EfS training, I have become keenly aware of the need to change the thinking of our community in order to change their actions.

Often during presentations on sustainability, I am asked to describe what sustainability “looks like” in the community or in a school. My old answer used to include the usual suspects – they recycle, use renewable energy, buy local, compost, etc. In short, promoting different actions. Now, my answer begins with “they think differently – and that thinking leads to different actions”.

The old expression, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” provides a wonderful analogy to describe our shift. We have done a great job of leading the horses (tons of information and reasons why we should be acting more sustainably) and providing the water (actual opportunities to act differently through our programs), but not all were drinking. Many were, and indeed, many more did with each additional opportunity we provided. For example, Sustainable West Milford’s Farmer’s Market initiative was so successful last year that we attracted 14,000 shoppers. That is 14,000 people promoting our local economy, local agriculture, and effectively acting more sustainably.

But how do you get more people to drink the water? The answer is in helping them to start thinking differently. If we follow the problem of unsustainable actions “upstream,” to their source, we find faulty thinking. For example, in our culture, we tend to focus relieving the symptoms of a problem rather than the problem itself – we take a pill to lower our blood pressure while ignoring our lack of exercise, poor diet, and excess weight. This is an example from EfS of a mental model called “Shifting the Burden Archetyp.e” Using this thinking leads you to working hard to resolve the symptoms of a problem while essentially ignoring the fundamental problem. Similiarly, SWM’s efforts have targeted community member actions while largely ignoring changing community member thinking – the fundamental problem.

Make no mistake: this strategy of changing community members’ actions by providing information and opportunities to make real changes has been extremely effective and essential in building momentum, exposure, and support, but like most strategies, it has its limitations. For one thing, it is not fast enough – our window for change is a narrow one, and for another, we can only do so much!

So, this year, in addition to our action-oriented strategy, we introduced a companion strategy to address this need for a change in thinking. If community members change the way they think, they will lead themselves to make the choices that will result in a truly sustainable community. As Jaimie reminded us during our training, there is never just one reason for a problem and there is never just one solution!

Stay tuned: the last of our New Jersey Learns series will appear on the Dodge blog on Wednesday.

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New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities.

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The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
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Follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook

On the heels of our Earthwatch guest blog series, Dodge has now teamed up with the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education for a new round of guest blog posts, “New Jersey Learns Mondays.” The reflections and stories from K-12 teachers and community leaders who have completed Cloud’s unique leadership training program “New Jersey Learns: Schools and Communities Learn Together for a Sustainable Future” will show that it is possible to lead the shift to a sustainable future.

From innovative instructional partnerships to curriculum design, NJ Learns is building capacity among educators, parents, community members, and, ultimately, our youth, to “live responsibly and well within the means of nature.”

If you missed them, you can read the previous NJ Learns entries with Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith and with Winnie Fatton of Sustainable Jersey. Today, we hear from Caitlin Wargo, the Director of Sustainability and Energy Management for the Far Hills Country Day School.

Far Hills Country Day School students making natural bird feeders

By Caitlin Wargo, Director of Sustainability and Energy Management
Far Hills Country Day School

The Far Hills Country Day School team (who are Jen Berry, parent; Jen Wagar, fifth grade teacher; Ben Yu, Pre-K teaching assistant and I) almost didn’t make it to NJ Learns. A freak power outage shut down the school on the day everything was due. FHCDS parent and Energy Committee member Jen Berry had power at her house, so we went there to finalize our application, along with an apology for not including any of the attachments, which were stuck on my computer at school.

That was about a year ago, and I know I can speak for our team when I say that we have gotten so much more out of this program than we could have imagined.

I thought I might walk away from the workshop with some helpful tips for the school’s new Energy and Sustainability Initiatives. Far Hills had been recycling and composting long before I was hired, so our students already had a stewardship in their “think.” The new Energy Initiative, on the other hand, charged us with achieving energy independence in ten years, a lofty goal offering us a significant opportunity to impact our students’ mindset regarding energy. From the outset, we saw this first and foremost as an opportunity to educate, so we have involved our students in all of our plans, enabling them to be the decision makers charting the course of the initiative: from researching renewable options to speaking on behalf of the school in front of the Planning Board.

Post-workshop, I met with our Head of School, Jayne Geiger, and told her I wanted to change up my whole approach. I think the words I used were, “Put my money where my mouth is.”

The information on systems thinking and brain science presented by Jaimie Cloud made so much sense, and helped me understand what we as a school needed to do if we were to really let the kids be leaders in this initiative.

The timing couldn’t have been better for Far Hills. We had just launched a new strategic plan emphasizing 21st century and project-based learning, as well as fostering global perspectives and building community. The EfS standards dovetail seamlessly with these, setting the stage for a collaboration that will have meaning at FHCDS and our community for years to come.

Here are some great things that have come about since our team took part in the NJ Learns workshop last year:

1. We played the fish game with the entire school faculty at the start of the school year. Feedback was unanimously positive and our faculty engaged in lively discussions about preserving the “commons.”
2. We taught the Jaimie Cloud’s one-day seminar over the course of two evening sessions to a group of ten co-workers and school parents, who were so enthusiastic that we had a hard time wrapping up each session. Some of those same teachers are now planning to attend the Curriculum Design Studio at the Cloud Institute this summer.
3. Jen Wagar is using the EfS standards as her team revises the third grade curriculum.
4. Jen Berry is organizing parents to host a film series/discussion group on sustainable themes for the school and community.
5. Ben Yu is working to put in a school garden. This garden will provide endless opportunities for learning about sustainable practices on a level that can be understood by our youngest learners. He is working with a group of interested students to decide what we should grow. One of the first suggestions was “puppies,” which may take a little work!
6. After taking part in NJ Learns, I revamped my environmental club to use a project-based learning approach. Within this new framework, the students generated several ideas. They decided to fix our defunct composting system and to rehab an underused courtyard at the school with outdoor seating and to create art installations and bird feeding stations. They also want to put in a small pond – I am not bursting their bubble yet. Who knows? It just might fly. As part of their research, are interviewing several community members who have offered to lend their expertise.
7. This spring, I will be working with eighth graders who want to help me determine the school’s most effective renewable energy options as part of their research project requirement.
8. The Science Department is working with the Upper Raritan Watershed Association to revise our existing Pond Project so that it includes data on the effectiveness of our retention basins in filtering runoff from our parking lots and drives.
9. FHCDS joined Sustainable Jersey in Bernardsville and will have students participating in their community information session in March, alongside students from the local public high school.

FHCDS students hanging their bird feeders

Where do we go from here? We’ve built a strong, committed team, and as Jaimie Cloud says, “This isn’t instant orange juice.” As a result of Far Hills Country Day School’s participation in the NJ Learns program, however, I think our students will be even better prepared to take their place as the leaders of the future.

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New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities.

* * *
The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook

On the heels of our Earthwatch guest blog series, Dodge has now teamed up with the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education for a new round of guest blog posts, “New Jersey Learns Mondays.” The reflections and stories from K-12 teachers and community leaders who have completed Cloud’s unique leadership training program “New Jersey Learns: Schools and Communities Learn Together for a Sustainable Future” will show that it is possible to lead the shift to a sustainable future.

From innovative instructional partnerships to curriculum design, NJ Learns is building capacity among educators, parents, community members, and, ultimately, our youth, to “live responsibly and well within the means of nature.” Join us for this February journey – and join Cloud for the learning journey to understand the “core content, competencies and habits of mind” to educate for sustainability (applications for the next NJ Learns training are due on Feb. 19 – see the Dodge homepage for details).

Last week, we launched the series with Stacey Kennealy of GreenFaith. This week, we hear from Winnie Fatton, who currently serves as a Project Manager for Sustainable Jersey, (which we’ve talked a lot about here on the Dodge blog!).

By Winnie Fatton

When I first heard about NJ Learns, it was an exciting, untried idea that the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation was supporting. Teams of educators, administrators, parents, municipal representatives, and the general public – anyone who was committed to Educating for Sustainability (EfS) – were invited to apply for the program. I was working on “Green Jobs for NJ,” which was a pilot project to infuse EfS into the curricula of Career and Technical Schools. I brought 2 teachers to the first training session – one from the Mercer County Vocational Technical School District and one from Essex County Vocational Technical School District. I felt that it would be a great opportunity to learn from a “master” and to introduce classroom teachers to what I believe should be one of the most important educational themes in our schools.

I believe that sustainability is a theme which offers teachers from almost any discipline a way to get students involved with issues that are significant and relevant to their daily lives and to their future career choices. At career and technical schools, for example, EfS could be incorporated into the construction and HVAC trades (think green, high performance buildings), landscaping (management of stormwater run-off, recapture/reuse of wastewater, xeriscaping and other low maintenance plantings), culinary arts (school gardens, safe food/local food, composting), automotive (hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid cars), or a multitude of other career clusters. These are the jobs of the future.

But green jobs aren’t the only reason to think about sustainability; there are so many other linkages to science, math, English, history, even graphic arts. It takes some creativity, but teachers can develop lessons that relate real time/real world issues to what students are studying. Equally important, teachers can help foster the creative thinking we will need to come up with the solutions to these major challenges.

Now, in my work with the Sustainable Jersey program – a certification program for municipalities in New Jersey that want to go green, control costs and save money, and take steps to sustain their quality of life over the long term – I have the ability to work with a lot of different audiences. Sustainable Jersey offers over 64 different “actions” which municipalities can take to become more sustainable, from creating a Green Team, to doing energy audits for municipal buildings and establishing the carbon footprint of the municipality, to doing communication outreach and education. All of the actions in the program are supported by a series of tools which are available on the Sustainable Jersey website, as well as through training programs and workshops. Each action or “tool” is fully resourced and includes a description of the action: who should be involved, how much it will cost, how long it will take, as well as resources for helping municipalities to complete it.

My initial focus was on helping to develop “tools” which relate to the “education” sector – and in the second round of the program, Sustainable Jersey will be offering information about “Education for Sustainability” as well as “School Based Energy Conservation Programs.” The School Based Energy Conservation Programs focus on helping students, teachers and all school staff members to make behavioral changes, which can reduce energy consumption. Some participating schools have even reduced their energy bills by almost 20% through behavior modification alone. And the Education for Sustainability tool offers ideas and resources for teaching about sustainability, including, of course, the NJ Learns program.

Over 250 communities in NJ have signed up to become certified through the Sustainable Jersey program since its inception in February, 2009. Sustainable Jersey and NJ Learns offer opportunities for communities to share inspire and learn from one another as we all work together toward a sustainable future. By giving people an understanding of why it is important to be sustainable, as well as the tools we need to be a more sustainable society, we have begun to create a process that will foster collaboration, and ultimately, achieve success. The knowledge that there are so many great people out there working toward a sustainable future is very gratifying, and I’m thrilled to be part of it.

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New Jersey Learns introduces teachers and community leaders to Education for Sustainability. Education for Sustainability (EfS) is a whole system approach to schools and communities learning together for a sustainable future and includes the Cloud Institute’s EfS Core Content Standards. The program brings community-based teams to participate in one year of introductory training, implementation, coaching and assessment activities. Want to participate? 2010-2011 NJ Learns applications are due on February 19th. Apply now.

* * *
The Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival in Newark is October 7 – 10!
Follow the Dodge Poetry Festival on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Poetry Festival on Facebook

Follow the Dodge Foundation on Twitter
Become a fan of the Dodge Foundation on Facebook