BOOKS: Place-Based Ed & Ecological Literacy

[Ryan Goble]

Obviously, there are a bazillion books on this topic but I came across three of these these four highlighted in Sierra Magazine...

Place-Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities (Nat...

Through academic research, practical examples, and step-by-step strategies drawn from classrooms throughout the United States, Sobel celebrates teachers who emphasize the connection of school, community, and environment. Place-Based Education uses the local community and environment as the starting place for curriculum learning, strengthening community bonds, appreciation for the natural world, and a commitment to citizen engagement.

Place-Based Science Teaching and Learning - 40 Activities for K-8 C...

Grounded in theory and best-practices research, this practical text provides elementary and middle school teachers with 40 place-based activities that will help them to make science learning relevant to their students. This text provides teachers with both a rationale and a set of strategies and activities for teaching science in a local context to help students engage with science learning and come to understand the importance of science in their everyday lives.

Moving the Classroom Outdoors: Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning in Action

Since Herb Broda published Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning, his groundbreaking first book on outdoor learning, many schools across North America have embraced the benefits of “greening” their learning programs. Herb has visited dozens of these schools and nature centers, and he showcases the very best examples of schoolyard-enhanced learning in action in his new book Moving the Classroom Outdoors, complete with photos of a wide variety of outdoor learning environments.

Designed to provide teachers and administrators with a range of practical suggestions for making the schoolyard a varied and viable learning resource, Moving the Classroom Outdoors presents concrete examples of how urban, suburban, and rural schools have enhanced the school site as a teaching tool. Herb focuses on the practical and the specific, including ideas for seating, signage, planting considerations, teaching/meeting areas, outdoor classroom management, pathways, equipment storage, raised gardens, and more. The book also provides an outdoor activity sampler, information on incorporating technology into the outdoor learning experience, and a chapter on the unique concerns of urban schools.

Moving the Classroom Outdoors: Schoolyard-Enhanced Learning in Action is filled with examples of model schools, innovative ideas, and inspiring people.

Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World...

Our efforts to build a sustainable world cannot succeed unless future generations learn how to partner with natural systems to our mutual benefit. In other words, children must become “ecologically literate.” The concept of ecological literacy advanced by this book’s creators, the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California, goes beyond the discipline of environmental education. It aims, says David Orr in his foreword, “toward a deeper transformation of the substance, process, and scope of education at all levels”—familial, geographic, ecological, and political.

The reports and essays gathered here reveal the remarkable work being done by the Center’s network of partners. In one middle school, for example, culinary icon Alice Waters founded a program that not only gives students healthy meals but teaches them to garden—and thus to study life cycles and energy flows. Other hands-on student projects described here range from stream restoration and watershed exploration to confronting environmental justice issues at the neighborhood level.

With contributions from distinguished writers and educators, such as Fritjof Capra, Wendell Berry, and Michael Ableman, Ecological Literacy reflects the best thinking about how the world actually works and how learning occurs. Parents and educators everywhere will find it an invaluable resource.

[Antonio Lopez]

Ryan, Thanks! There is another book that I'd like to recommend: 

Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence

[Ryan Goble]

Thanks Antonio, this has been on my to read list for some time.  You can feel free to do a sweet post on the book in the relevant discussion forums with a picture and link - that kind of self-promotion is VERY COOL with me!