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