Global Ecology Education Initiative Begins “EarthCare” Professional Development in Fall
In the Fall of 2014, the Global Ecology Education Initiative (GEEI) will begin providing special professional development sessions for secondary science teachers from Boston Public School and the greater Boston area. The PD sessions, called EarthCare, will focus on one of the foundations of sustainability thinking – Global Ecology. Under the GEEI umbrella, established by Professor Douglas Zook, “EarthCare” will feature four two-day intensive workshops.
Below is an abstract of EarthCare:
Through an application process, teachers selected will receive key knowledge on the remarkable connections and interdependencies of nature on a global scale. Topics include the power of aeroecology, which is the movement of nutrients over long distances in the atmosphere; the dominance of cooperative partnerships, known as “symbiosis”, throughout all the continents; the recognition that bacteria function as a kind of global organism impacting life and ecosystems everywhere; the growing data on global climate change; and inspiring examples of sustainability efforts by peoples around the world. Moreover, the teachers gain this cutting edge, timely content while exposed to useful pedagogy modeling.
Participating teachers will become part of the EarthCare Teacher Corps, which will foster cross-talk and sharing about how to best help high school students develop as evidence-based, sustainable-minded earth citizens.
The GEEI EarthCare program is made possible through the generosity of SED alumna Elisabeth Carter and the CDQ Trust.
