Showcasing the sustainability achievements of educators inside and outside of the classroom
Whether you’re looking for lesson plans or project plans, we have everything you need for students in grades K-12. Topics range from gardening and food, to waste and recycling, to advocacy and land!
Sustainable Earth Educator Awards (SEEAs)
As climate and sustainability issues grow, teachers, administrators, and educators everywhere are stepping up to the plate with innovative projects and lesson plans to support their students and the planet. We want to recognize and share the 19 lessons and projects these educators developed to further advance sustainability within their curriculum.
Gardening
Create and foster curriculum, community partnerships, and a “living lab” in the form of an indigenous garden space so that students can contribute to a more sustainable world.
Create school pollinator and produce gardens inclusive to all students. Each grade level (PreK-5) is responsible for caring for a garden space where students not only taste their harvest but produce is also donate to a food share program.
Teachers and students work together to create a pollinator garden that gives back to the world. Students work together to compost, create gardening book guides, and learn about pollinator and plant relationships and identification.
Students will grow native plants and various vegetables and fruits to study plant lifecycles and farm-to-table lessons. Lessons also include learning how to compost with various organic waste and caring for soil.
This project aims to develop and deepen students’ connection with nature, empower students’ voice and local agency, encourage citizen science, and inspire students to adopt sustainable practices in everyday life all while targeting math skills.
Recycling
Ways to Conserve the Environment – 5Rs
This lesson is designed not only to instill climate change awareness and responsibility among pupils, but also help them gain better understanding and appreciation of our environment through the 5Rs.
Create a student-run recycling program that increases sustainability and recycling awareness on campus, diverts the amount of waste going to landfills, and inspires leadership and teamwork.
Recycling and Hawaiian Culture
Teach students about the importance of recycling, how recycling can help earn money, and the deep Hawaiian cultural value of our relationship with ‘aina (land).
Waste
In this lesson, students will apply their reading, writing, and speaking skills to solve the problem of overconsumption of resources, specifically items of apparel and fast fashion.
In this lesson, students collect the trash on the schoolyard. After sorting and graphing the collected trash, students work for community advocacy, writing for help and advertising the problem to local neighborhoods.
Conserving Chemicals, Containers, and Practices
Efforts will consist of studying industry work and the harmful effects to the public. Preferably, the students in Work-Based Learning will study the area of their career interest for best practices in the industry so that they will know the danger points of chemicals and containers used, if any.
Students learn how to create and test biodegradable forks. They test various combinations of these ingredients to satisfy the different needs of their hypothetical clients and complete an engineering design notebook.
Advocacy
Students will learn about the three historical events that shaped the environment called the “Apache Leap”, which is mythologically believed to be the creation of the Apache Tear gemstone. *
*recommended age range 13+
Middle and high school students in the Environmental STEM Camp created and presented Earth Day assemblies for elementary school students. Students researched the topics, created slide shows, and then presented to audiences of 300-500 students.
Students develop an idea to improve campus sustainability performance, compile a compelling grant application (text, budget, and supporting materials) outlining the need for the idea, and present it to their peers.
Land
Tiny Forests are outdoor classrooms, carbon sinks, and habitats for biodiversity. Each Tiny Forest doesn’t make a huge difference in terms of greenhouse gases, but they are important places of education. They are also models of how we can rethink our relationship to urban and suburban natural spaces.
Food
Provide students with avenues where they feel empowered, safe, and sustained. Students will understand the concept of a “war garden”/ “victory garden” and the role children, Soldiers of the Soil, played.
This lesson examines sustainability through the eyes of Florida farmers. Each video short allows students to examine the role that each of these farms play on the sustainability of the state that we live in. Students will be able to predict the impact of individuals on environmental systems.
Community Engagement & Biology
Our research group traveled to various locations that have experienced a wildland fire. Soil samples of various radial distances from the core of the fire were analyzed for mineral content and made into winogradsky columns to culture the microbes in the samples for visualization and identification.