GreenHearted Blog

Check this page for all the latest updates to the GreenHeart Education website as well as our stories of transformative education for sustainability.
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The Compassionate Climate Action blog can be found at http://blog.greenhearted.org

Greening the Holidays at School

Greening the holidays at school is vital. The festive season is the perfect time to teach life cycle analysis and sustainable development, as antidotes to consumerism and waste.

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Green Schools are Vegetarian Schools

Green schools are vegetarian schools. Meat at school is no longer cool because it contributes to global warming and climate change.

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Furnishing the Optimal Learning Environment

Furnishing the optimal learning environment means putting students and their learning first when choosing classroom furniture, set up and decor.

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Arts for the Earth

Arts for the Earth hold the power to transform. Where do music, theatre, dance and the visual arts intersect with environmental education? How can they contribute to a future that sustains life?

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Greening Chemistry

Greening chemistry, by studying ways to reduce or eliminate toxic chemical substances, is an excellent way to integrate chemistry with sustainability education.

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Greening Geography — Connecting Students to Their World

Greening geography means helping students connect to their world through a transformative sustainability lens.

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Great Naturalists

Studying great naturalists will help students see the rest of Nature through the eyes of people, past and present, with a passion for it.

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Greening School Hiring

One way to ensure that new school staff are environmentally friendly is through greening school hiring practices, such as posing relevant questions in the first interview.

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Environmental Education in French

Climate change (les changements climatiques) is an important and timely topic for integrating environmental education in French as a Second Language classes.

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Greening ESL (English as a Second Language)

Greening ESL (English as a Second Language) happens when we integrate environmental and sustainability issues, ideas and activities into ESL lessons.

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Greening the Curriculum

Greening the curriculum (using this green school curriculum model) creates graduates who are ready to tackle 21st century challenges such as climate change.

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May Peace Come to Earth

May peace come to earth. Thanks for nature. God bless people in the world

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School Gardens

School gardens are a great way to use the schoolyard as a classroom, reconnect students with the natural world, and teach them valuable food production skills that integrate with several subjects.

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Greening School Behaviour and Attitudes = Greening Our Ethic

Greening school behaviour means applying an environmental / sustainability ethic to all decisions we make within our school community.

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Postsecondary Sustainability Education

Postsecondary sustainability education can start in every lecture theatre and lab, with every professor and instructor.

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Prayers for the Earth

Prayers for the Earth is a collection of graces and prayers from different cultures and religions around the world, as well as prayers to heal the oil spill.

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Nature-Friendly Language and Metaphors

As teachers, we can examine the language choices we make and use more Nature-friendly language and metaphors.

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circles of light

with all my heart from my heart i see clear waters healthy creatures beloved brothers and sisters breathing together with the earth we are all one beating

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Prayer for Japan

O God of the sea and of the mountains, we acknowledge the effects of our deeds, particularly of hurting earth through the mining activities of people,

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Child Honouring

Child Honouring is a philosophy and way of life that puts care and concern for our children at the centre of all our decisions and everything we do personally and as a society.

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Nature Deficit - Children Need Nature

Nature deficit disorder is rampant. Children need Nature, like they need sleep and healthy food.

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Climate Change Primer

This climate change primer gives teachers what they need to know about global climate change, and offers resources for teaching it.

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School Greening

School greening means transforming your students' education, making sustainability the focus of curriculum and professional development, facilities and operations, and organizational behaviour.

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Sustainable Family Development - Helping Families Go Green

So many environmental efforts are aimed at individuals, but isn't the family a primary unit of change in our society? Sustainable family development helps families develop "green" competencies.

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Spirit of the West

Oh Spirit of the west In the colorful sunsets that autumn brings May I see myself as the spirit that I am In the passing seasons of mother nature May

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For You, Dear Mother

From the ignored and forgotten simple plants in the yard most consider weeds, you bring food and medicine. On this dear little plot of land I will not

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Health and Physical Education for the Earth

Health and Physical Education for the Earth provides examples of ways to integrate a sustainability ethic and an understanding of our connection with Nature into health and P.E. curriculum.

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Barriers to Environmental Learning and Action

The many barriers that keep adults from environmental learning and action can be categorized as cultural, psychosocial, adult learning, and environmental adult education barriers.

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Enticements to Sustainability and Environmental Learning and Action

Enticements to sustainability are the cultural, psychosocial and educational ways to inspire and motivate environmental learning and action.

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Saying Grace Together

Saying grace together at mealtimes is an excellent way to "practise gratitude" and grow closer together as a family or a class, in a way that teaches children where their food comes from.

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Just Say Yes

This is one of the sad ending stories you mentioned. I was working in a school with fairly barren classrooms and suggested that we get plants for every

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Reasons for Greening Your Teaching

Educators who want to green their teaching need a transformative rationale to help them get

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Greening School Facilities

Greening school facilities is imperative because our students learn what they live. They should spend their learning time surrounded by energy efficiency indoors and naturalized playgrounds outdoors.

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Ecological Principles for Grades 4 to 5/6 (9-11 Year Olds)

As students start to explore and become curious about the bigger world around them, this is the time to give them a solid grounding in ecological principles and the laws of the universe.

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Green Language Arts and English

Integrating green language arts and English studies with environmental education and education for sustainability comes quite naturally with ecological awareness.

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Prayer of Love for Mother Earth

Mother Earth, May we learn from your being to persevere with faith, to balance with grace to embrace with love and give of your bounty.

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Make Friends with Nature

To make friends with Nature is the simple yet transformative idea that if we treat the natural world as we would like to be treated, like a friend, then it will treat us kindly in return.

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Naturalist Intelligence

Helping students develop their naturalist intelligence or "nature smarts" is an important gift teachers can give the world.

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EARTH: The Best GIFT to Humankind

Heavenly Father, we praise and thank you for giving us water to drink, air to breathe and land to stay upon. May these 3 earthly elements remind us of

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Pray for the Gulf of Mexico

Oh Mother Father God hear me now My heart is heavy with sadness about the gulf oil leak Oh Mother Father God remind my brothers and sisters: that together

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Prayer for All of the Animals and Marine Life Affected by the Gulf Oil Spill

Pray for the Dolphins, the great Whales, the Stingrays, the Sharks and all of the fish of the Ocean — their only home. Pray for the Pelicans — our Brother

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Love

Love yourself. Every part of yourself. Even the things you do not wish to see are a part of you and need to be understood so that you may heal. Our brothers

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Seeing the Spirit

Spirit breathes the aliveness Into every flower and tree, And foster our connections To life's Sacred Mystery. The net that binds us together Is the spirit

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Why Do We Accept Schools as Prisons?

Today is a quintessential September day. Sunny, not too hot, soft breeze, the light just right.

It's also the second full day of the new school year here in Canada, and once again, our children have been gathered up and imprisoned by those places we innocuously call schools.

I went past several schools today while doing my errands (I teach part-time), and I saw big green fields, parking lots filled with cars -- and no children.

Seriously, what are we thinking? Can we honestly rationalize locking kids away indoors for 5 or more hours, several days every week, for most weeks of the year, and call that an education for life? Real life?

Practically every excuse one could give for keeping students indoors for all their lessons (except maybe team sports like football during physical education) would be fatuous.

We continue to teach children that the natural world is not a valuable partner in their education.

What is it we're afraid of? Why don't we use our schoolyards as an extension of our classrooms? Just go outside. Just go. Take the kids. Make it an experiment. Create your groundrules for further excursions after your first trip outside. See how the children behave. Do a walkabout of your schoolyard. Find some things, some areas to explore, to observe over the course of the year. Find out what your students find of interest.

You could spend a whole year just observing and studying the squirrels in your playground, or the trees or other plants at the fringes. You could do all your poetry study -- reading, writing, reciting -- outdoors in a special spot in the schoolyard. Math doesn't need to be taught indoors. Nor does social studies, science, art, music or another language.

Especially on quintessentially beautiful days, please, take your kids outdoors!