Who We Are

Environmental education is an education process dealing with the interrelationships among the natural world and its man-made surroundings; is experience-based; is interdisciplinary in its approach; and is a continuous, lifelong process that provides the citizenry with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to individually and collectively encourage positive actions for achieving and maintaining a sustainable balance between man the environment.

The JCPS Center for Environmental Education is dedicated to engaging all students’ minds and hands in real-world investigations of natural and cultural environments.

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Environmental Education Defined

Kentucky legislation KRS 157.900 to 157.915 defines environmental education as follows:

• Environmental Education is an education process dealing with the interrelationships among the natural world and its manmade surroundings; is experienced based; is interdisciplinary in its approach; and is a continuous, lifelong process that provides the citizenry with the basic knowledge and skills necessary to individually and collectively encourage positive actions for achieving and maintaining a sustainable balance between man and the environment.

• Environmental Literacy means having adequate knowledge and understanding of environmental concepts and processes.

Principles of Environmental Education

Environmental Education (EE) practice in the United States is defined by these characteristics (excerpted from Defining Environmental Education, a unit in the EE Toolbox, US EPA):

• EE incorporates a human component in exploring environmental problems and their solutions.

Environmental solutions are not only scientific—they include historical, political, economic and cultural perspectives. This also implies that the environment includes buildings, highways and ocean tankers as well as pine trees and coyotes.

• EE rests on a foundation of knowledge about social and ecological systems.
• Knowledge lays the groundwork for analyzing environmental problems, resolving conflicts, and preventing new problems from arising.
• EE includes the affective domain: the attitudes, values, and commitments necessary to build a sustainable society.

The role for educators in addressing the affective domain is not always easy. Educators should make it clear that differing personal values exist, that these values can color the facts, and that controversy is often motivated by differing value systems.

EE includes opportunities to build skills that enhance learners’ problem-solving abilities, such as:

• Communication: listening, public speaking, persuasive writing, graphic design;
• Investigation: survey design, library research, interviewing, data analysis;
• Group process: leadership, decision making, cooperation

JCPS Center for Environmental Education Mission

August 19, 2002

The mission of the JCPS Center for Environmental Education is to promote and support curricular initiatives that aid JCPS students in becoming environmentally literate and academically successful.

The JCPS Center for Environmental Education is dedicated to engaging all students’ minds and hands in real world investigations of natural and cultural environments. Educators work together to design student work that is cooperative, inquiry-based, interdisciplinary, and aligned with core content with an emphasis on literacy. Lessons encourage learners to make connections between field study sites, the school campus and the student’s individual communities, in order to take full advantage of each student’s personal experience. Investigations and field study later translate into competency to act within the home, school, and community. This action is based upon both local knowledge, aesthetic appreciation of the land with which students are connected, and motivation to connect these within their communities.

Environmental Education develops the ability to think critically while making responsible decisions concerning our impact on the natural environments in a multicultural society. Environmental Education helps students master the core content in a deep and integrated way.

Our major projects include:

• Blackacre State Nature Preserve
• Outdoor Classrooms
• Recycling programs
• Diversity in the field of Environmental Education
• Supporting community organizations
• Creating interdisciplinary curriculum models

To accomplish this, the Center’s staff works with individual teacher-leaders, principals, and community based environmental educators in the following ways.

• Designing/leading field study programs which supports the core content guides
• Developing and implementing professional development
• Collaborating on curriculum development.
• Offering and providing resource/technology services

For a complete description of programs, click here.