The board and staff of the Center for Ecoliteracy offer our gratitude
for your contributions to education for sustainable living and our best wishes for
a peaceful new year.
Articles
In the Tangle,
by Wendy Johnson
News
Teaching Strategies, Student Work Added to School Lunch Initiative
Website
"Delicious Education" Seminar for Teachers to be Offered
at Center
CEL Articles Published in Canadian Journal of Environmental Education
The Story of Stuff Illuminates the Underside of Consumerism
Davis Voters Tax Themselves for Farm to School Programs
New Guide to Organic Gardening by the Prince of Wales
Calendar
January 15: Proposals Due for 2008 North American Association for
Environmental Education Conference
January 31: National Teach-In on Global Warming
US
February 1–29: National Campus Energy Challenge
US and Canada
Thinking outside the Lunchbox:
In the Tangle, by Wendy Johnson
In this excerpt from her forthcoming Gardening at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World (2008, The Bantam Dell Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.), Wendy Johnson beautifully shares basic yet profound lessons gleaned from more than 30 years of "understanding the earth under my fingernails." A longtime friend of CEL's and an advisor to The Edible Schoolyard, she is a master organic gardener, a master teacher and teacher of teachers, a passionate and poetic weaver of words, and a constant exemplar of life lived in harmony and relationship with Earth.
Wendy Johnson: "In honor of wildness inside and outside the garden gate, every spring I leave a random corner of our garden untended. I let it go into a neglected tangle. Throughout the growing season I pass by this fallow spit of wildness and it feeds my somewhat fierce soul. In early autumn, when I am obsessed with our latest harvest of slim, white-stockinged leeks and golden beets, I look across the ordered rows of the garden to that far tangle of seedy cow parsnip and dry skunkweed and my wild roots stir back to life."
Read Wendy
Johnson's essay, In the Tangle >
See other
articles in Thinking outside the Lunchbox >
Visit
Gardening
at the Dragon's Gate: At Work in the Wild and Cultivated World website >
Teaching Strategies, Student Work Added to School Lunch
Initiative Website
The Center has added teaching strategies for integrating curriculum and examples of
student work to the website of the School Lunch Initiative (SLI), a collaboration of
CEL, the Berkeley Unified School District, and the Chez Panisse Foundation to improve
school meals and integrate formal curriculum and instructional gardens, kitchen classrooms,
and the school lunchroom. The new material may be found by following the "5 Strategies" link
on the "Tips and Resources" page of the SLI website. The page describes strategies
developed, with the assistance of CEL resources, by sixth-grade teachers at Martin
Luther King Middle School in Berkeley. They connect instruction in history, science,
literature, and writing through a focus on food and agriculture. The web page describes
how King teachers put these strategies into practice. A linked slide show includes
samples of student work that illustrate students' growing understanding of food and
food webs. Also linked is "Food Webs," a resource connecting essential understandings
about food webs to state content standards and to the Benchmarks for Science Literacy of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Visit
Five
Teaching Strategies >
"Delicious Education" Seminar for Teachers
to be Offered at Center
In February, the Center for Ecoliteracy and the Chez Panisse Foundation will jointly
present a three-day seminar, Delicious Education: Garden, Kitchen, and Community. The
seminar, to be offered February 4–6 at the Center's offices in Berkeley,
supports teachers wanting to embed experiential instruction into the academic program,
using the kitchen, garden, and community as contexts for learning.
Visit
Delicious
Education >
CEL Articles Published in Canadian Journal of Environmental
Education
CEL cofounder Fritjof Capra's "Sustainable Living, Ecological Literacy, and the
Breath of Life" and senior editor Michael K. Stone's "Rethinking School Lunch:
Education for Sustainability in Practice" were the lead articles in the 2007 edition
of the Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, published in November. The
journal, a refereed annual publication, seeks to further environmental education by
providing a thoughtful forum for researchers, scholars, practitioners, and students.
Its editor solicited the articles after attending a workshop offered by the Center
during the 2007 conference of the American Education Research Association.
Visit
Canadian Journal of Environmental Education >
The Story of Stuff Illuminates the Underside of Consumerism
This incisive new 20-minute film builds on a decade of research on global production
and waste chains. Writer and narrator Annie Leonard, coordinator of the Funders Workgroup
for Sustainable Production and Consumption, examines the real costs to the Earth
and to people of the systems of extraction, production, distribution, and disposal
required to feed an unsustainable culture of consumption. Combining narration, animation,
and a light tone (along with a serious, well-documented message), The Story of
Stuff is both accessible to students and thought provoking for adults. Its website
offers a wealth of tools for getting wide exposure for the film and its ideas: free
downloads of the film as well as of short YouTube teasers; DVDs for a dollar or less;
blogs; tips and discussion guides for hosting screenings; and extensive resources
for viewers moved to learn more and take action.
Visit
The Story of Stuff website >
Davis Voters Tax Themselves for Farm to School Programs
In November, Davis (California) Joint Unified School District voters approved a parcel
tax that includes $60,000 to $80,000 annually for fresh farm produce for school lunches.
The district's board included the farm to school funding in the ballot measure after
polls indicated voters' willingness to pay new taxes to improve school meals. Trustees
have approved a memorandum of understanding with the Davis Farm to School Connection,
a project of the Davis Farmers Market Foundation, to work together toward a goal
of purchasing 60 percent of produce served in the district from local growers. The
parcel tax will provide a sustainable source of funding to help reach that goal.
Visit
Davis Farm to School Connection >
New Guide to Organic Gardening by the Prince of Wales
The Elements of Organic Gardening (2007, Kales Press) is Prince Charles's beautifully
photographed third book exploring techniques useful to organic and sustainable gardening,
including building healthy soil, returning meadows grounds to their original wildflower
state, and nurturing and maintaining garden lawns. On his last Bay Area visit, the
prince, an advocate of organic gardening and agriculture for over a quarter century,
toured the Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School and was hosted by members of Marin
Organic, including CEL program officer for food systems Janet Brown.
Visit
The Elements
of Organic Gardening website >
Calendar
January 15: Proposals Due for 2008 NAAEE
Conference
Proposals are due January 15 for presentations to the 2008 North American Association
for Environmental Education (NAAEE) conference. The conference, "EE
on the Prairie: Pioneering New Strategies," will be October 15–18 in Wichita,
Kansas. See the call for proposals for conference strand descriptions and proposal
review criteria.
Visit
Visit
NAAEE conference website >
January 31: National Teach-In on Global
Warming
US
A year-long organizing effort by Focus the Nation to create dialogues on global warming
solutions at education, religious, civic, and business organizations culminates January
31 in educational symposia across the country. Political leaders and decision-makers
will be invited to participate with faculty and students in on-campus, nonpartisan,
roundtable discussions. Institutions will vote on their national priorities for action,
toward producing a campus- and citizen-endorsed policy agenda for 2008. Over 1,000
institutions have committed to participate, and dozens of college and university presidents
have endorsed the initiative.
Visit
Focus the Nation >
February 1–29: National Campus Energy Challenge
US and Canada
North American high schools, colleges, and universities will participate in the first
National Campus Energy Challenge (NCEC), competing to achieve the greatest reduction
in energy use during February, compared with their average consumption for the three
previous Februarys. NCEC is a project of more than 30 leading youth organizations throughout
the US and Canada.
Visit
National Campus Energy Challenge >
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