ecoliteracy.org

This Center for Ecoliteracy seminar is sold out. We invite you to watch our newsletter and website for announcements of future events.

June 24 – 28, 2013: How can educators help students respond creatively to the environmental crises they see around them? How can teaching and learning advance academic achievement; address today's important ecological challenges; and help develop strength, hope, and resiliency in young people?

Join the Center for Ecoliteracy — and an outstanding group of  inspiring educators, scientists, artists, and activists — for a dynamic residential seminar exploring a new model of education that connects emotional, social, and ecological intelligence.
 
"Becoming Ecoliterate" will be held on the campus of San Domenico School in San Anselmo, California. The seminar will be based on the Center's acclaimed book Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence, coauthored by psychologist Daniel Goleman and Lisa Bennett and Zenobia Barlow of the Center for Ecoliteracy, with professional development by the Center's Carolie Sly.

This seminar provides an opportunity to explore what a growing number of educators have identified as a deeply felt imperative: to support "irresistibly engaging" learning that genuinely prepares young people for the challenges presented by this unprecedented time in human history.

The seminar offers participants:

• Engagement in the five Ecoliterate practices: developing empathy for all forms of life; embracing sustainability as a community practice; making the invisible visible; anticipating unintended consequences; and understanding how nature sustains life.
• Inspiration from "in-the-classroom" and "in-the-world" stories from educators, scientists, artists, and activists who model an integration of emotional, social, and ecological intelligence.
• Hands-on experience with techniques for applying Ecoliterate practices in school communities.
• Participation in professional development that links emotional, social, and ecological intelligence.
• Dialogue and collaboration with colleagues in a beautiful setting.

Featured presenters include:

• Jeannette Armstrong, Okanagan author, educator, artist, and activist from British Columbia whose teachings on indigenous communities have been a foundational inspiration for the Center's work.
• Fritjof Capra, systems thinker, cofounder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, and author of The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, The Science of Leonardo, and other books.
• Chris Jordan, a renowned Seattle-based artist known for his works depicting mass consumption and waste and for his documentation of the life cycles of the birds on the Pacific Ocean atoll Midway Island.
• Frances Moore Lappé, author of 18 books, including Diet for a Small Planet and EcoMind, cofounder of Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy and the Small Planet Institute, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award (the "alternative Nobel Prize").
• Sandy Neumann, former principal, longtime environmental educator, and professional development manager for the Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) project, which was profiled in the documentary A Simple Question.
• David Phillips, co-executive director of Earth Island Institute and director of its International Marine Mammal Project.
• Laurette Rogers, former teacher, now director of Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW), which evolved from the Shrimp Project, created by her and her fourth-grade students. 
• Tony Smith, the charismatic superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District (and former San Francisco 49ers football player), who is addressing systemic injustices in the school system and transforming OUSD into a full-service community school district.
• Joan Wright-Albertini, first-grade teacher with Park Day School, an independent K–8 school in Oakland, whose engaging teaching is featured in Ecoliterate.

Center presenters include: Zenobia Barlow, cofounder and executive director; Lisa Bennett, communications director; Karen Brown, creative director; Carolie Sly, director of education programs, and Michael K. Stone, senior editor. 

Priority will be given to applicants registering as teams.

The Center is grateful for the support of the TomKat Charitable Trust, the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, and individual donors who make it possible to offer this residential seminar at the fee below.

Scholarships are available on a limited basis to California public school educators from underserved communities.

Terms and conditions.