Schools For a Sustainable Future

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Professional Development Course for Teachers Developing School Environmental Projects

One of the most critical issues that will face the children we teach will be the quality of the world they inherit. A school that both teaches and practises environmentally sustainable behavior will offer children and the local community important role models.

In practice however other education priorities have made it very difficult for teachers and schools to take on these responsibilities. In most cases there may only be one teacher willing to take on the extra tasks and responsibilities. Without further support these teachers often find the process a losing battle.

Schools for a Sustainable Future has developed a PD course to address these issues. The key features of the course are as follows:

• The projects teachers are undertaking will be a key focus. The meetings would be about your activities and we would concentrate on how you can get things to work. We would also focus on CSF outcomes for the projects to ensure that curriculum objectives are also achieved. Extensive Environmental Education resources will be made available to assist teachers with their projects.
• Issues of sustainability will be addressed as part of the course. In essence it would be the intellectual heart of the project - why we are trying to get the community to recognise and address the problem. This section would have relevant reference material and focus each week on individual environmental issues, how they interact and how they affect Australia.
• The SFSF Worming into the Community project will be outlined as an initial project. Worming into the Community has been implemented in over 70 schools and offers a creative and well tested way of establishing a waste reduction/recycling project which is student driven.
• SFSF will be promoting school projects to a wide range of business contacts with a view to gaining further support. (Please attach an outline of the environmental project under consideration for your school.)
• Sessions would be held every 2 weeks over a sixteen week period (excluding term breaks) This would enable teachers to develop their projects over two terms and obtain ongoing benefit from each others experiences and ideas. ( Sessions from 4.15 p.m to 6.15 p.m)
• Projects would be promoted through local papers on the SFSF Website, SFSF Annual Presentation Day and SFSF newsletters. SFSF has run highly successful professional development days over the past three years. The workshops information, ideas and networking opportunities were highly regarded by participants. This ongoing PD course offers a special opportunity to develop highly effective environmental projects with the professional and peer support that is essential given the demands placed on teachers.