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Work With Community Organizations
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The JCPS Center for Environmental Education works to enhance student opportunity for learning at a districtwide level. Many districtwide initiatives are based on collaborative work with community organizations. Collaborative work addressing environmental education and environmental literacy includes the following projects:
- The Center for Environmental Education, Metropolitan Sewer District, and the Beargrass Creek Task Force Urban Watershed Field Studies on Beargrass Creek for Middle School Students
- The Center for Environmental Education and the Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation Summer Camp at Blackacre
- The Center for Environmental Education and Operation Brightside in a variety of projects:
- Environmental Leadership training for high school students.
- Development and publication of The Schoolyard Habitat Guide.
- The Center for Environmental Education and the Kentucky State Fair Board in program planning, development, and implementation of educational exhibits for the Kentucky State Fair.
- The Center for Environmental Education at Blackacre is a Project Wild Service Center as a collaboration with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife.
- The Center for Environmental Education, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the JCPS Curriculum Resource Center in the development and publication of the Wild About Reading Annotated Bibliography of Children’s Environmental Literature.
Collaborations with the above organizations are varied and ongoing as opportunities arise.
Collaborations with community organizations at large occur through the Cultural Consortium of which the Center for Environmental Education is a member. This is an organization, which includes groups that serve the schools as field trip venues. Approximately 50 member groups attend monthly meetings to receive current information on issues concerning the schools, and discuss best practices in serving schools effectively through field trips.
The Center for Environmental Education uses this as an opportunity to collaborate in delivering clear information concerning the needs of JCPS teachers in addressing the core content and assisting groups in the development of curricular material for field studies, which satisfies the academic needs of the students.
The Center for Environmental Education and the Cultural Consortium collaborated on an adaptation of the KDE Standards and Indicators for School Improvement for community organizations serving schools through field trip opportunities. This document, Standards and Indicators for Community Organizations: A Model for Improvement, provides a rubric for organizations to assess all aspects of their work that affects programs for students.
The JCPS Center for Environmental Education seeks to be actively involved in collaborative projects with community organizations for the purpose of providing authentic, experiential learning opportunities both in the classroom and in the community.