ecoliteracy.org

Center for Ecoliteracy representatives Zenobia Barlow, Carolie Sly, and Karen Brown are featured presenters at the Hawai'i Island School Garden Network Summer Conference, "Smart by Nature — Growing School Garden Curriculum K–12." The conference, offered in collaboration with the community-based nonprofit Kohala Center, will focus on building a statewide foundation for ecoliteracy education, using as resources the Center's books Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability and Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment.

Senior editor Michael K. Stone is a keynote speaker at the 2010 Biennial of the Americas in Denver. This month-long celebration of the culture, ideas, and people of the Western Hemisphere is organized around themes of innovation, sustainability, community, and the arts. Michael's presentation, based on the Center's Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability, is July 20 at the McNichols Building in Civic Center Park. Center consultant Jeannette Armstrong speaks July 22. Events are open to the public.

Center for Ecoliteracy Executive Director Zenobia Barlow further develops the theme of empathy in an address to the concluding session of the 2009–2010 Schooling for Sustainability Leadership Academy. Effective leaders appreciate multiple perspectives, connect to deep sources of sustenance, and remain open to emerging innovation.

Center for Ecoliteracy cofounder and board president Fritjof Capra and senior editor Michael K. Stone were invited to contribute a lead piece to the inaugural May edition of the Journal of Sustainability Education. Center creative director Karen Brown was keynote graduation speaker at Besant Hill School, an independent high school in Ojai with a curriculum grounded in creative expression and sustainability.

In March at the Women's 2020 Leadership Caucus on "Facing the Climate Crisis, Collaborating for Solutions," renowned poet and essayist Susan Griffin introduced a new poem, "There." She announced that she was dedicating the poem to Zenobia Barlow and the Center for Ecoliteracy.

"Power is an idea. And in our culture it’s a stifling idea," writes Frances Moore Lappé in this excerpt from her new book, Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (2010, Small Planet Media). She argues that we are more powerful than we think, and that misconceptions — about power, human nature, or how change happens — stand between us and a more just, sustainable world.

August 16-18, 2010: How can we help students understand nature? How can that understanding help us design more sustainable societies? Distinguished educators, artists, and scientists will engage participants in hands-on explorations — using the arts to improve science teaching and environmental education, and seeing nature as a model and mentor for sustainable design.

"We have never tried to design a school food program with our children's health ... as its central goal," argues Janet Poppendieck. Her new book, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press, 2010) skillfully dissects the history and politics of school food, shows how we got to where we are, and offers a practical vision for fundamental change. In this excerpt, she points to signs of growing sophistication about school food (including the work of the Center for Ecoliteracy) as the basis for a national conversation.

What is a green school? asked leaders revamping the Kingdom of Bhutan's education system. There is no green schools formula, we answered. The movement's variety is one of its strengths, but here is one succinct summary, based on our twenty years' experience.

June 23-25, 2010. This three-day seminar builds on the Center for Ecoliteracy's acclaimed book Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability. It is designed to give participants ideas, resources, and inspiration they can take home to make teaching more engaging, effective, and memorable. The seminar includes presentations and demonstrations by sustainability education leaders, exposure to inspiring projects, hands-on practice with techniques that work, and reflective conversations with seminar faculty and fellow educators.

The Center for Ecoliteracy announces the publication of the discussion guide it developed for Food, Inc., the provocative recent exposé of the realities behind the American food system. The 102-page guide provides questions and activities to promote critical thinking and a deeper understanding of complex issues, from public health to animal welfare and workers' rights, raised by what The New York Times calls “one of the scariest movies of the year." Food, Inc. is distributed on DVD and Blu-Ray by Magnolia Home Entertainment. The discussion guide is available online from Participant Media, which produced Food, Inc. in collaboration with River Road Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures

Creativity is a key property of all living systems, says Center cofounder and board chair Fritjof Capra. Understanding this process provides guidance for a new kind of leader. Capra shows how lessons from nature can help leaders to foster mentally and emotionally healthy working and learning environments, establish conditions rather than give directions, use authority to empower others, promote networks of communications, and hold space for community creativity. This essay is adapted from a speech delivered to a Center for Ecoliteracy pre-conference intensive, Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability, at the Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California in October 2009.

"In 2001, when Victoria Rydberg applied for a teaching job at River Crossing Environmental Charter School, she didn't know much — or feel particularly passionate — about the environment," writes Lisa Bennett in the Center for Ecoliteracy's new book, Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability. "She was twenty years old and six months out of college, with a degree in literature. But she needed a job and believed she was a good teacher, and she persuaded administrators to take a chance on her.…By any sensible standard, it looked like a setup for disaster." Smart by Nature (Watershed Media/University of California Press, 2009) portrays the growing sustainability movement in K-12 education. It showcases inspiring stories of public, independent, and charter schools; presents successful strategies for introducing schooling for sustainability; and offers resources for school change. Environmental educator David W. Orr calls Smart by Nature "must reading for teachers, school administrators, parents, and the concerned public."