Education+for+Sustainable+Development

I went to a workshop at York on LSF (Learning for a Sustainable Future) and ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) and LSF is a non-profit organization that helps teachers, parents, community members etc. integrate sustainability into the classrooms. The mission for LSF is to promote knowledge, skills and practice essential for a sustainable future.  [|http://www.lsf-lst.ca]  For teachers, it offers professional development workshops and classroom resources for free. []  provides lesson plans and materials for ESD. All the lesson plans are linked back to the curriculum. You select the grade level, subject and the theme, for instance, air pollution, and it will search the database and provide you with resources and lesson plans that you can use in your classroom.  Only recently have some schools been taking part in educating students on sustainability. At my current placement, many teachers, particularly in the Global Studies department have really took the time to educate their students on environmental and social issues. Next year, the school will hopefully apply to become an EcoSchool, which is very exciting!  I believe as many others that it is very important to inform students of their impact and dependence on the ecosystem. The question that I have been struggling with is: how do you open their eyes to ecological literacy?  As a teacher, perhaps you can create awareness and improve student learning of the ecological issues in our environment. You can give them the knowledge and the skills that they can take with them and apply in their schools and communities and use social action to help address local, national and global ecological problems. But how do you create active citizens in the world that are committed to uncovering the impact and consequences of human actions on our ecosystem and taking a role that reduces the negative impact and restores health of the ecosystems? That is my challenge particularly when your students refuse to sacrifice their current activities in their day-to-day life to help better the environment.  Students NEED to develop a deeper connection to their natural world. David Orr argues, in Earth in Mind, that we are ignorant and oblivious to the world around us. We are passive human beings towards our environment (Orr, 2004). We separate ourselves from nature and stay as far away from it as much as we can. He argues this specifically in the classroom and the home where there is no source of an ecological environment; just a sterile technology-driven space. This particularly is familiar to my own life and environment. It makes me realize my own distance from nature. When thinking of the very little association I have with the natural world, I wonder how many of my students will have the same experience as myself especially in the classroom. How can I possibly help my students appreciate and value nature if they do not perceive it as valuable to themselves or their homes?

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Orr, D. W. (2004). <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">//<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;">Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect. // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20px;"> Washington, D.C.: Island Press.

Aleksandra Vujanovic