Teaching to heal the world<\/h1>\n

“How can we improve the systems we’re a part of?”<\/p>\n

That’s the question my team posed to our 4th- through\u00a06th-grade students last spring at The Cornwall School, in Cornwall VT. It was the start of a deep dive into education for sustainability.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At Cornwall, one year our focus was cause and effect. “Where does it come from?\u00a0 Where does it go?” Cliff formations along a local dirt road, energy and matter cycling through our garden and bodies, or even social drama on the playground. Then we planted vegetables in our school garden and composted our food scraps improve our own health and the health of the soil.<\/p>\n

Another year we asked “How do we shape the land?\u00a0 How does the land shape us?” and dove deep into understanding interdependence through exploring the geography and geological history of our region of the Champlain Valley, human use of natural resources, and regional native cultures.<\/p>\n

With that foundation of knowledge, we then partnered with several local farms so that students could uncover how the farmer shapes the land and the land shapes the farmer. And a few kids were lucky to pitch in for a carrot harvest! We climbed a lot of mountains. We made art with nature.<\/p>\n

And we celebrated our journey to uncover who and where we are and how we can make a difference.<\/p>\n

For me, it comes down to hope.\u00a0 Hope for the future and the planet and all her creatures. Including us.\u00a0 Hope for a better life for all.<\/p>\n

When we help kids connect to who they are, foster deep connections with the human and natural communities that we are part of, help them understand the fundamental interconnectedness that hold us together, and when we create opportunities for them to develop agency- that is, help them to understand that each one of us, no matter how small, can make a difference- then, I believe this world may have a chance at a just and sustainable future.<\/p>\n

I believe kids can change the world.\u00a0 Because they already have.<\/p>\n

Save<\/span>Save<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teaching to heal the world “How can we improve the systems we’re a part of?” That’s the question my team posed to our 4th- through\u00a06th-grade students last spring at The Cornwall School, in Cornwall VT. It was the start of a deep dive into education for sustainability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":16090,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[697,736,152,274],"class_list":["post-15851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cornwall-school","tag-global-goals","tag-ngss","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15851"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16144,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15851\/revisions\/16144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tiie.w3.uvm.edu\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}