Stewardship Education

Beyond interfacing with citizens, consumers and voters throughout the state, especially in Santa Fe, the project will collaborate with flagship schools and communities in numerous meaningful ways as follows:

1. Sustainability Seminars – The clean energy traveling exhibit will raise awareness and educate students about the power of their knowledge and choices. In the classrooms and assemblies in flagship schools, students of varying ages will participate in the Sustainability Seminar – a frank discussion about:

   • The importance of energy in our daily lives;
   • The affects of society’s energy choices on the environment and the world;
   • Why it is important to embrace renewable energy and conservation;
   • What students and their families can do to make an impact; and
   • How they can grow up to be successful professionals and entrepreneurs in the new energy economy (and simultaneously help rescue the world).
2. Energy Stewardship Workshop – The project will engage students/ classrooms with a project to learn about greenhouse gases and the problems they pose, how our society/schools/households use energies that emit this kind of harmful pollution, and what the students/classrooms can creatively do to limit this pollution and become more sustainable;
3. Family Power Pledging – which means students will be invited to take the Power Pledge themselves as well as to encourage their families to take the Power Pledge.
4. Community Based Education (CBE) Projects – Participating Pueblos and Native American communities in the state will establish Tribal Youth Leadership Councils (TYLCs) to work in conjunction with Tribal Environment, Education & Economic Development Departments to strive not only to limit their communities’ carbon footprint through energy conservation but also to research, select and use appropriate homegrown new renewable energy systems in place of fossil fuels. The TYLCs will determine their own energy stewardship pilot project to work on which will be presented at year end youthful gathering of nations; and
5. Summertime Sustainability Internships (SSI) – The above Sustainability Education endeavors will take place in the spring and fall semesters of 2008 and, in the case of Native American community based education, also during the summer. Extraordinary commitment shown by students across the board will be noticed not only in the form of presenting them with Junior Climate Courage Awards, but also in the form of selecting youth leaders for both volunteer and paid Student Sustainability Internships – whereby they would work on the Drive for Sustainability Project in 2008 as well as for the Climate Leadership Institute’s long term endeavors.

Description of the Sustainability Curriculum and Its Components –

The Drive for Sustainability Project will be doing extensive educational outreach throughout the spring and fall semesters of 2008. The plan is to visit dozens of communities and schools (elementary-community college level) throughout Santa Fe and the State of New Mexico, provide a sustainability seminar and/or energy stewardship workshop with teachers, students and relevant administrators, and do more elaborate follow-up with curriculum specifically tailored to the needs and interests of the individual school/community participants involved.

As part of the sustainability seminar and preliminary workshop curriculum there will be hands on demonstration of the traveling clean energy exhibit as well as an overview of the “new discipline” of energy stewardship. The tenets of this new discipline are as important for meeting the pressing environmental challenges of the 21st century as they are for addressing society’s calls for educational reform, and are as follows:

• Fostering an interdisciplinary approach to learning (encompassing math, science, social studies, economics, distance learning, language arts, engineering, etc.);
• Pioneering a community based education endeavor which motivates and engages students in real world problem solving and community service pursuits while they simultaneously apply/retain/learn fundamental academic skills;
• Spurring critical thinking, leadership and decision-making abilities on the part of students which are increasingly needed in the world we live in.

The Sustainability Seminar and Energy Stewardship Workshop material as well as the individually tailored follow up facilitation are all based on high standards of content and curriculum that are collaborative and proven with certification from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) among other reputable organizations. The Drive for Sustainability will incorporate and utilize many best existing organizations’ publicly available educational resources and student directed curriculum including:

• Energy for Keeps Electricity from Renewable Energy and Renewable Energy Action Project (www.energyforkeeps.org);
• Alliance to Save Energy tips for implementing a school wide energy efficiency program and multidisciplinary lesson plan on conservation (www.ase.org);
• Northeast Sustainable Energy Association Clean Green Power Project for K-12 graders and adults to learn about alternative, renewable energy with activities involving research, exploration and action (www.nesea.org)
• Energy Quest’s on-line energy stewardship resource for students, parents and teachers (www.energyquest.ca.gov);
• KidWind helping students develop knowledge of math and wind energy (www.kidwind.org);
• Renewable Energy Education Lab Reel Power Project and Solar Panel Demonstration for K-12 and community college level (www.learnonline.com);
• And selections from other environmental-educational organizations.

Much like the steps taken in the watershed action curriculum by the Global Green Rivers Environmental Education Network’s (now at www.earthforce.org), the seminar, workshop and follow-up curriculum promoted by the Drive for Sustainability will encourage the student/community participants to engage in a Personalized Energy Stewardship Project whereby the participating team will:

1. Identify a Common Problem (in this case pertaining to an indiscriminate use of energy and learning about the threats associated with fossil fuel energy and excessive energy consumption – references include selections of Al Gore’s work on the Climate Crisis and Inconvenient Truth);
2. Conduct Research / inventory the situation in the local community (in this case doing an ecological footprint, greenhouse gas emission footprint or carbon footprint per student, family, school and/or community – there are a handful of excellent online vehicles to calculate these footprints whereby students will gain knowledge about the impact they have on the earth and develop math skills in the process);
3. Choose a Solution // an effective strategy to authentically help remediate, minimize or solve the problem locally and beyond (students in this case will propose and select by consensus or majority vote a personalized and authentic solution that will be encapsulated in a demonstration project of their choosing);
4. Take Action (the class/team realistically and methodically implements or puts together their demonstration project within the school or project year);
5. Present and Reflect (students will present on their project to important audiences of their choosing and then will reflect on lessons learned and any on-going steps to take to expand their impact).

Take the Pledge and Enlist in the Clean Energy Revolution

E-mail robb@takeresponsibility.us to set up a Stewardshop Workshop at your school, business or association.