Celebrating Earth Day and CSS Environmental Education Curriculum

Earth Day and Columbia Secondary’s commitment to Environmental Education

 
As we celebrate Earth Day I want to invite all to ponder about the major issue of our times – how to live sustainably and be responsible stewards of our planet. How can each of us, and our community as a whole, learn to act in ways that protect the planet's long term well being and its rich and diverse biological heritage?
As many of you may know I spent most of my life as an environmental educator. Teaching about the environment is a lifelong passion. In Puerto Rico I help found the environmental educators association, and was executive director of an NGO dedicated to teaching children and training faculty about ecological biodiversity. Much of my research interest is in the area of environmental ethics – specifically how can knowledge and emotion promote the development of an environmental ethic – how can we teach our children to understand AND love nature enough to want to protect it, indeed to change fundamental aspects of their lifestyle to do so. When I committed to starting Columbia Secondary School, I was motivated in part by the dream to create an urban school whose curriculum centerpieced on environmental issues
I am proud to say that already, in our short 3 year history, we have made environmental ethics and environmental education a central locus of our curriculum. CSS already has, arguably, the richest environmental curriculum of the city. CSS has successfully built an extraordinary environmental education curriculum.
Our middle school curriculum offers students more than a dozen courses related to the environment, and as we expand into the Upper School, there will be equivalently rich opportunities to learn about nature, about the human impact on nature, about the poetry and beauty of nature, about how science and engineering can help us insure we preserve our planet and live in harmony with it...
Our middleschoolers must take one of three interdisciplinary courses on sustainability – Water, Food and Energy; our upperclassmen (and woman) - Air, Transportation and Health. Our Architecture in the City course touches on green design and teaches kids to use biking as a way of seeing and traveling throughout our city. Our fieldcourse in the island of Puerto Rico, focuses on Biodiversity, exposes students to the wonders of tropical diversity and immerses them in experiences that alter their relationship with nature. Our Nature in the City, and Hudson River and the City field courses explore the intricate and fundamental relationship between our city, its inhabitants and its natural environment. In our Philosophy curriculum, students grapple with the ethical aspects of our carbon footprint, of the need to protect species from extinction, of our moral responsibility to respect other species, of our collective responsibility as intelligent stewards of this blue planet. In our Sustainability elective, students learn to live sustainable lives, while in our Environmental Leadership program they strategize on how to take community and personal actions to help solve environmental problems. In Gardening – students learn of the importance of greening our city, by growing flowers gardens and rooftop vegetable gardens. Our students can choose to explore specifically Marine Biology, City Biodiversity, Genetics, and Environmental Science, looking in depth at some specific aspect of biological diversity. Next year our Ecology, Geography and History of Ancient Mexican Civilizations and History of the European Union study abroad courses will be going to Mexico, France and Germany to explore the relationship between society, history and the environment....
As we celebrate Earth Day let us also celebrate the richness of our environmental curriculum!

 

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