Earth Education UK

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To find out more about earth education in the UK, go to www.eartheducation.org.uk

Thursday 5 December 2013

Earth Keepers - earning the Y and S keys


 
Some encouraging news from the Institute for Earth education Annual Reportfor 2012 regarding completion by participants of the of Earthkeepers programme.
I have highlighted those sites that are in the UK. As you will see, they are a healthy proportion of the sites world-wide that have achieved these high completion rates.
At each of the following centres, 90% to 100% of their Earthkeepers participants in 2012 earned all four keys to complete the full programme:
Christ Church Grammar School - Kooringal, Dwellingup, Western Australia, Australia
CELP Edgewood Eden Mills, Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Hamilton Wentworth District School Board, Outbound, Waterdown, Ontario, Canada
Upper Grand District School Board, Norwell CELP, Palmerston, Ontario, Canada
YMCA of Cambridge, Kitchener-Waterloo, St. Clements, Ontario
Garrett Hall Primary School, Tyldesley, Manchester, Lancashire, UK
London Youth Hindleap Warren, Forest Row, East Sussex, UK
My Green World at Folly Farm Centre, Pensford, Bristol, UK
Agua Caliente Park, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Lake Forest Open Lands Association, Lake Forest, Illinois, USA
Teaching Responsible Earth Education (T.R.E.E.), New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
And at these centres, at least 80% of the participants completed the full programme:
Meriharjun luontotalo, Helsinki, Finland
High Down Junior School, Congresbury, North Somerset, UK
Earth Learning Adventures, Fort Gratiot, Michigan, USA
Starflower Experiences, Huntington, New York, USA
IEE do not have returns from all the centres offering Earthkeepers so do let me (and IEE) know what your percentage completion rates are. And if you are struggling to get all your learners to complete the programme then I am sure that foks at the centres which are achieving this would be happy to discuss with you how they do it.
Incidentally I spoke to Bruce Johnson at the recent Real World Learning Conference where he was a keynote speaker and he tells me that IEE plan to produce more materials to support teachers back in school to help their learners carry out their tasks and earn their keys. They plan to use some of the classroom materials which Jon Cree and I wrote for Rangers of the Earth many years ago.
John Rhymer

2 comments:

  1. Great to read this - thanks John for sharing! wondering what Bruces keynote speech was all about?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Incidentally Bruce's keynote speech was largely about earth education, focussing on Earthkeepers. He reported on some fascinating research from Cyprus where participats from a large number of schools took part in Earthkeepers.
    There was a very significant increase in understanding of the key concepts, more so in the second year of the study, probably because the staff leading the programme had become more familiar with and confident in leading the individual activities and the programme as a whole.

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