Posts tagged EFS
Join us on March 10-11 at Woodward’s Summit for Transformative Learning (STLinATL) 2025!

Jaimie will be leading two workshops at the Woodward’s Summit for Transformative Learning (STLinATL) hosted by Woodward Academy on March 10 and 11, 2025!

The Summit will explore the theme “Embracing the Future of Education” as a beacon lighting the path ahead for deeper learning.

Jaimie’s workshops will focus on:

  • Educating for Sustainability with the Brain in Mind

  • Effective Practices for Aligning and Integrating Education for Sustainability (EfS) into Core Curriculum

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2019 Spring Newsletter

The Cloud Institute is dedicated to the vital role of education in creating awareness, fostering commitment, and guiding actions toward a healthy, secure and sustainable future for ourselves and for future generations. 

The unique challenges that define our time require fundamentally new ways of thinking. If we intend to transition to a sustainable way of life, educators and young people have a critical role to play. Join us as we explore what’s possible when we educate for sustainability.

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Recap of Webinar- Staying Hopeful: Gathering Strength for the Work Ahead

How can we remain creative and hopeful in these crazy times?  Jaimie has been thinking deeply about this question for the past few months.  Her recent blog posts, Game on or Game over?  (with video) and Easier Done than Said:  Move from Fear to Action by Educating for a Sustainable Future address this topic and encourage us to get to work. In her recent webinar, Staying Hopeful: Gathering strength for the work ahead, Jaimie asks the question, “Why should we be hopeful?” She offers up three big ideas that have been a source of inspiration during this time of negativity and chaos.  These concepts are useful, natural occurrences that can serve, both as metaphor, and as examples of how life organizes towards life on our spaceship called Earth.  

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Easier Done than Said:  Move from Fear to Action by Educating for a Sustainable Future

In my experience, it is harder for people to think about what it will take to educate for sustainability, than it is to actually educate for sustainability. This makes sense, given that change of any kind is threatening to our reptilian brains. We have a biological fear of change. Add to this the fact that most educators think of “sustainablizing” as an add on to an already packed life, curriculum and to do list. Given the flavor of the month way that schools often operate, it seems like just one more thing to do.  It isn’t.  It can’t be. It is the thing we all must do if we want to thrive over time.

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Teachable Moments | Game Over or Game On?

For the past three years, I’ve taught a required graduate course on the Ethics of Sustainability in the Design for Social Innovation Program at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. During this time, I’ve witnessed the unintended results of educating about unsustainability.  Although my students come from all over the world, they have at least a few things in common at the beginning of the year. These young people report feeling depressed, hopeless and guilty. Many of these students, believing they hold degrees in sustainability, have become experts in its opposite--unsustainability. They are nervous at first at the thought of discussing the ethics of sustainability. They tell me that their professors were very effective at pointing out that it’s too late, that we’ve already exceeded too many critical thresholds and that there is no way back. Game over?   

My response to them is always the same, “I think what your professors have actually been saying is that they cannot imagine and they don’t know how we are going to pull off the mid-course correction that is required if we want human and other life to flourish on Earth indefinitely.  I think this has more to do with their imaginations, mental maps and knowledge base than it does our fate.”  Game on.

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New Support for "Sustainablizing" your Curriculum: EfS K-12 Scope and Sequence

There are many options when it comes to designing curriculum that educates for sustainability.  Some educators prefer to "sustainablize" their curriculum by working with the commencement edition of The Cloud Institute’s EfS Standards and Performance Indicators and cross walking and embedding them where and when appropriate.  This also involves determining which ones are developmentally appropriate at each grade level. Others prefer we do that for them. If you would like to see how we would  "sustainablize" our K-12 curriculum from the first quarter of Kindergarten to the last quarter of 12th grade, check out our new EfS Scope and Sequence.  
 

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Long Awaited Education for Sustainability Benchmarks Released on Earth Day

Educating for a Sustainable Future:  Benchmarks for Individual and Social Learning will be released by The Journal of Sustainability Education on Earth Day, April 22, 2017.  This 70-page account is authored by, and represents the current and best thinking of forty-two of the major scholars and practitioners of the field of Education for Sustainability (EfS).  The Benchmarks include the Big Ideas, Thinking Skills, Applied Knowledge, Dispositions, Actions, and Community Connections that define Education for Sustainability.  They embody the essential elements that administrators, curriculum professionals, faculty, board and community members need to adopt Education for Sustainability; to align with it; to self-assess their own performance, and to intentionally and effectively educate for the future we want by design. In addition, The Benchmarks embody the consensus that the field needs to demonstrate the impact of EfS and to catalyze wide spread implementation.

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EFS in Schools: Trevor Day School

Today we’d like to introduce you to Trevor Day School, a Pre-K through Grade 12 independent day school located in New York City. Trevor’s commitment to sustainability is evident inside and outside the classroom.  Jaimie Cloud has been working with the school since 2009, providing training and resources to help the school integrate Education for Sustainability across grade levels and academic disciplines.

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EFS: The Key to Sustainable Communities (Spoiler Alert!)

I have a confession to make. A ten year effort to help my community become sustainable has had limited success. Early enthusiastic progress, followed by a return to something resembling the status quo, has become a familiar pattern among the institutions in my town. Each experience starts with that same intoxicating esprit de corps, yet somehow, after the public’s attention shifts, things slowly end up fizzling out. This boom bust cycle leaves me wondering— if our local institutions can’t move beyond business as usual, how can we, as a society, ever hope to achieve a sustainable future?

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