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education*energy*environment |
 Get Your School Involved |
| EcoSites In Action |
| Three Pillars |
| What is EcoSites Slide Show |
| Becoming An EcoSite Slide Show |
| Participating in EcoSites |
what is EcoSites?
advancing operational environmental literacy in the CBE
EcoSites is a new initiative of the Calgary Board of Education aimed at encouraging and recognizing environmental learning in schools. The initiative runs over a school and provides support for environmental literacy and action projects that aim at reducing the CBE’s ecological footprint. EcoSites is coordinated by the CBE EcoTeam and involves a process that includes schools identifying key environmental learning goals tied to curriculum, as well as conducting an audit of the school’s environmental performance, a series of action projects, and a year end celebration.
EcoSites is built on the three pillars of increasing environmental understandings, encouraging contact with the natural world, and developing and implementing environmental action projects in the school community. These three pillars focus on cognitive, affective, and behavioural outcomes, as well as encouraging learning ‘about’ the environment, learning ‘in’ the environment, and educating ‘for’ the environment.
The official launch of EcoSites in the CBE will occur in fall 2009. Schools can choose to attain criteria for one of three levels of EcoSites: Emerging Green, Green, or Leading Green. It is expected most schools will start with the Emerging Green level in their first year of involvement, followed by the Green level in their second year, and finally becoming a Leading green Green EcoSite in their third and subsequent years. EcoSites will be an umbrella for many existing environmental learning programs. Schools engaged with other programs such as Destination Conservation (DC) can apply the campaigns from DC to attaining the some of the EcoSites criteria for the level of EcoSites the school is working towards. Schools involved with EcoSites are eligible for a rebate on actual energy savings incurred through their EcoSites action plans.
The goal of EcoSites is to create an environmentally literate population of students and staff through embedding environmental learning across the curriculum, engaging students in the natural world, and encouraging environmental planning and action projects. A group of 7 CBE schools participated in an EcoSites pilot initiative over the 2008-09 school year. These schools were involved in the creation of the program structure and content and piloted the process of being an EcoSite over the school year. These schools include Lord Beaverbrook High School, FE Osborne Junior High, Ernest Morrow Junior High, Dr Alice Jamieson Girls School, WH Cushing Workplace School, North Haven Elementary, and Chaparral School.
Web Administrator: L. Diemert
Last Modified:
April 2, 2012
