Curriculum+Review+Memo+6

Allison Mrugal 12/15/15 Curriculum Review 6: Sust. Ed., 4280-01 Prof. Fortun
 * Food Systems **

Prompt: Choose your own

Response:
 * What organization developed the curriculum module you are evaluating?
 * The Green Schools Initiative, [], directed me to the curriculum below:
 * Curriculum, http://www.nourishlife.org/teach/curriculum/viewing-guide-synopsis/
 * Nourish, []
 * Developed by WordLink, http://www.goworldlink.org
 * What is the mission of the organization?
 * WorldLink's mission is “to inspire understanding of critical global and local issues through transformative learning experiences.”
 * “Nourish [is designed by WordLink and] is an educational initiative designed to open a meaningful conversation about food and sustainability, particularly in schools and communities. To inform and inspire the largest number of people, Nourish combines PBS television, curriculum resources, web content, short films, and teacher and youth seminars. With a distinctly positive vision, Nourish celebrates both food and community.”
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">What is the educational mission and philosophy of the organization?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">“WorldLink designs media, education, and civic engagement programs that encourage individuals and groups to actively participate in creating a sustainable future.” Word link collaborates with other organizations that strive to create “a sustainable food future.”
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">What does the curriculum module aim to teach? In other words: what are the learning outcomes supposed to be?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Nourish curriculum module examines the question, “What’s the story of your food?” and responds to it by connecting a global community. It also shows how the food we eat affect our health and others around the world. The curriculum also suggests ways students can help themselves, others, and the environment.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Do you think the curriculum is appropriated designed to produce the intended learning outcomes?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The Nourish curriculum provides the means for children to grasp its intended curriculum outcomes. It accomplishes this by showing students what food undergoes as it travels from farm to table. It also analyzes local food, food traditions, ecosystems, food ads, school lunches, and concrete ways that students can cause change.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Does this curriculum teach the kind of literacies the EcoEd Research Group advocates?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The curriculum covers many EcoEd Research Group literacies. They include:
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">understanding of their own health and well being as shaped by an array of both proximate and far-off causes. Diet and cigarette smoke need to be considered, for example, as well as the health effects of transboundary air pollution and climate change.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">understanding of how their own actions have an array of proximate and far off effects. In choosing when and what to drive, one has an effect on air quality for example. In choosing consumer products (made of vinyl, for instance), one becomes involved in an occupational health hazard.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> understanding of potential for change, and of alternative ways of doing things and organizing society (though familiarity with historical and cross-cultural examples, for instance).
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">capacity to use empirical understanding of complex causation to identify specific points of intervention.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> capacity to recognize the multitude of factors influencing what they are told about environmental problems (such as asthma), including vested interests, disciplinary bias and blindness, and the sheer limits of knowledge.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">having creative info-seeking practices, animated analytic capabilities, and a capacity to narrate complex chains of events.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">What could be layered into this curriculum so that it addresses more of the learning outcomes that the EcoEd Group advocates?
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">layered into the curriculum could be ways that students learn to cooperate with one another to create sustainable food systems. This may include building a lego town and creating a sustainable food system for that town. It should also strive to eliminate the need for consensus of the best food system. It should support a divergent way of thinking about resilient food systems. In doing so, the Food Ads section could recognize that students should understand the roots of advertisements and make knowledgable decisions based on that, avoiding any sense of dualism in good and bad advertisements.