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Model
Schools,
In Partnership with
OSPI'S Model Links EE Program |
WDFW's Ecosystem Wildlife
Education works with OSPI's Model Links project to create ten school prototypes
to demonstrate that environmental education is a powerful tool, for school districts
to implement the legislature's goals for schools (Goal 1 of HB 1209 Basic skills:
Reading, Writing, Communication and Mathematics).
WDFW Ecosystems Education
is a key partner and funder of the Model Links Project now in the third year
of what began as an EPA grant funded Model Schools Project.
What is Model Links
- The Model Links project
addresses one of the most significant needs in environmental education: the
building of strong and effective relationships between environmental education
and systemic educational reform.
- Model Links is a partnership
of government and nongovernment groups working to support model schools in
reform efforts including developing integrated curriculum plans with environmental
education as the process and content organizer.
- Model Links is a mechanism
to multiply the positive effects of the Model Schools experience. Model Schools
are responsible for mentoring and facilitating through workshops other schools
in their school change process.
Model Links seeks
to create change in three areas:
-
Student Learning: Are
students thinking critically, solving problems, motivated? What's the evidence
of learning gains?
-
School Improvement:
How can the schools enhance student learning? Create an integrated program?
Restructure the school day? Promote teaming? Use the community and the environment
as a learning lab? Include parents as partners?
-
Environmental Quality/Health:
Is the health of the local environment improving and how? How can the school
site model environmentally responsible behaviors?
Komachin
Middle School, Lacey.
Teachers planning "sustainable communities" theme.
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What we learned
from Model Schools :
- schools need a curriculum
integration framework in place to best use curriculum packages like Project
WILD.
- resource agencies must
gear their education programs to facilitate education reform; working with
teams of teachers and building administrative support.
- environmental education
is as much a process as content
How WDFW Education
changed from what we learned through Model Schools
- created opportunities
to benefit teacher instruction, student learning and resource management:
using the curriculum Integration Framework and NatureMapping
- crafted programs to effectively
work through partnerships, complementing other programs, avoiding duplication
and competition: WDFW's NatureMapping working with DNR's Students in the Watershed.
- developed educational
programs for both a community and watershed context: WILD Watershed Workshops,
Curriculum Integration Framework.
- developed programs enabling
schools and citizens to take part in the democratic process of managing local
community resources.
What WDFW gets from
Model Links:
- WDFW created a wildlife/watershed
curriculum integration framework popular with teachers.
- Model Schools are developing
curriculum integration plans which includes elements of fish and wildlife.
Future plans are to coordinate curriculum planning with teachers from kindergarten
to 12th grade.
- Model Schools community
projects involve improvements for fish and wildlife on school grounds and
in communities.
- Model Links Schools will
train other schools in what it takes to use environmental education as a vehicle
for school reform, representing wildlife as a significant factor.
- Model Links schools
as teacher trainers and school mentors will represent how WDFW Ecosystems
Education programs can be used as a resource to develop community based environmental
education.
WDFW shares with other
partners a systemic environmental education driver, the Model Links Schools,
to multiply the effects of our work over the past three years. This is work
which will be sustained within the community
"teachers are beginning
to see EE an integrator -- not another subject area -- as a way to unify
loose ends and tie together the many environmental projects that were happening
at our school..."
Elementary school teacher |
Model Links Outcomes
By June 1996, each school
team will have:
- developed and piloted
a curriculum integration plan using environmental education as a tool.
- completed 4 community
environmental projects.
- taken steps towards modeling
environmentally responsible behaviors on school sites.
- documented their change
processes in a portfolio.
- shared their experiences
with other schools and the environmental education/school change communities
in a variety of ways.
- a plan to lead three
workshops for other schools during the following schools year through their
local educational service district.
Ridgeview
Elementary, Yakima.
Teacher team at Model Links integration workshop.
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1996 Model Link
School Participants:
- Belfair Elementary (Belfair)
- Ridgeview Elementary
(Yakima)
- SandHill Elementary (Belfair)
- South Colby Elementary
(Port Orchard)
- Waterville Elementary
(Waterville)
- Frank Wagner Middle School
(Monroe)
- Housel Middle School
(Prosser)
- Komachin Middle School
(Lacey)
- North Tapps Middle School
(Sumner)
- Pt. Defiance Elementary
(Tacoma)
Housel
Middle School, Prosser.
Teacher team planning thematic curriculum.
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Model Links Partners
- Office of the Superintendent
of Public Instruction
- WA Dept of Fish and Wildlife
- Puget Sound Water Quality
Authority
- Evergreen Center for
Education Improvement
- WA Dept of Natural Resources
- Governor's Council on
EE
- WA Dept. of Ecology
- Environmental Education
Association of WA
For more information
about WDFW's partnership with OSPI's Model Links Project please contact:
Washington Department
of Fish and Wildlife
Attention: Wildlife Education
600 Capitol Way North
Olympia, WA 98501-1091
Phone:
(360) 902-2189, Fax: (360) 902-8117
