Earth Day
This year is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Use the resources recommended by our experts to make every day of the year Earth Day for your students. From the Earth Day Network’s teach-ins to Earth Echo’s Virtual Field Trips, educators will find a comprehensive array of resources for educating their students on a variety of environmental issues.
Design for Change’s Design Sprint Podcasts cover a variety of topics rooted in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and tackle a comprehensive array of issues around the environment, inequalities, and mental and social health. I love how these Sprints encourage students to use compassion as a powerful tool and build their capacity to improve the world around them! They are also hosting the #DoGoodFromHome Challenge to provide ways to engage while we stay home, social distance, and more as we fight to prevent the spread of COVID-19. And I also really like the ability to address the local to global perspective by allowing teams to compete to represent the U.S. at the annual Design for Change Global Conference.
I love the newly added sections that cover how to host impactful digital teach-ins that will empower your audiences and communities to take on civic action and stewardship activities. I think this resource is a highly effective tool for bringing your community together and building capacity to make change. For those needing ideas for which topics to cover, the Topic Grab Bag section of the toolkit is a great place to find specific information on teach-ins for plastics pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, food sustainability, air and water quality, food waste and security, agriculture and deforestation, and flooding and drought. With suggestions on what speakers to invite and calls to action to end with, this toolkit is great for hosting in-person and virtual events!
Guidelines:
- Fairness and accuracy
- Depth
- Emphasis on skills building
- Action orientation
- Usability
I love these virtual field trips because they connect educators with the world’s top conservation research scientists and resource management experts. Educators can dive into exciting new places and topics with this great online STEM exploration series. And, it’s a great way to learn about what it takes to start a career in conservation science or to inspire educators and students to take action on a variety of environmental challenges! And every event is streamed live using Zoom, recorded and posted on Earth Echo’s YouTube channel, and includes classroom supplemental resources so educators can easily incorporate the events into on-going classroom learning.
When three EE powerhouses come together, you know it will be good! This resource is an incredible tool for educators wanting to engage their students in systems thinking activities required to understand the complexities of climate change. I love how this guide makes it easy to find the best activity for your audience based on age group and topic. Having this collaborative document helps educators draw the connections between Earth’s systems and will help students solidify their understanding of the world around them and their role in it. By providing an array of activity types for all learning styles, these activities will help students better understand complex EE topics and be able to protect their environment!