Land+and+Community+(Geological+forces->Soils->Food+justice)


 * Link to curriculum:** __http://www.sustainableschoolsproject.org/curricula/land-community__

**What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?** The Shelburne Farms’ Sustainable Schools Project developed this unit. Shelburne is an organic farm in Vermont, but they host several different kinds of educational programs, including summer camps, the PLACE program (co-hosted with the University of Vermont), and internships. Their Sustainable Schools Project aims to integrate sustainability and civic engagement into school curricula, and works with teachers and schools towards this end.

**What is the overall mission of the organization?** The Sustainable Schools Program aims to make sustainability an overarching theme throughout a school’s or teacher’s curricula.

**What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?** Teaching sustainability as __makes__ “every aspect of school and community life—the way decisions are made, the way energy is used, the origins of its food—is an opportunity to teach.” By teaching sustainability in this way, they hope to make the disparate disciplines of most curricula more coherent and relevant for students, and allow for more community engagement into schooling. It also makes improving the school ecology both a goal and a learning opportunity.

**What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be?** The project divides desired results into what it calls “transfer,” which is what the students will be able to do independently after the lesson, along with “meaning” which includes the enduring understandings and questions that students will be left with, and “acquisition” which includes the kinds of facts and skills that students are expected to acquire. What drew me to the unit, upon first glance, were the “transfer" goals: identify and draw conclusions about evidence of landscape change  understand connections between land and people  make informed choices about food  critically think about cause and effect, combined with prior knowledge = the ability to hypothesize  Other goals include, however, knowledge about geology, soil, food access/justice, and data collection and analysis. In terms of templates for curricula, I really like the category of “essential questions,” since it at least serves as a reminder of the need to not simply make students more knowledgeable, but also curious. Essential questions for this unit include:

What forces cause the shape of the land to change over time? How do we shape the land and how does the land shape us? (over time and today, flood damage, bridge closed, new route, etc.

**Do you think the curriculum is appropriately designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?** It is a little difficult to judge, as it refers to several School District Science Kits that I am unsure how to find. The lesson plan recommends three different field trips, but many schools would find it difficult to spare the money or the time. However, the curriculum does, in the spirit of the organization, tie disparate subjects together while stressing community engagement at both the school and local level. It also seems to include a fair amount of project work, although no descriptions are included. Assuming that the School District Science Kits are good, and that social science, science, and English teachers can cooperate effectively, I believe that the curricula can produce the intended outcome.

I did wonder about how food justice and access issues would be taught. I am assuming that the arrows in the title (Geological forces->Soils->Food justice) refer not to causation but to the progression of the unit.

**Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies advocated by EcoEd?** This unit does address a large number of EcoEd’s literacy goals, including a "capacity to conceptualize complex causation, without being paralyzed” (assuming, again, that those arrows were not causal).

**What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes advocated by EcoEd?** As far as I can tell, this unit does not include any material on understanding vested interests and the limits of knowledge. This could be a good addition to either the language arts or social science sections of the course, approached through the lens of a food justice issue.