During the years I spent as an educational consultant, I decided I did not like the word teach very well. For a lot of people it seemed to imply acting upon students rather than with them. sometimes I still think we need fewer teachers out there and more helpers and builders instead. In earth education we believe the real task of teaching is to create stimulating, focused learning situations for specific outcomes, then figure out ways for the learners to repeatedly apply what they have learned. That is why genuine teaching is such a tough, demanding profession. so when we use the term environmental teacher, we mean a teacher in the sense of working with others to help them learn -- not showing, but sharing.

If you are already an earth advocate, we want to help you become an earth educator. But genuine teaching for the earth cannot be performed in isolation. As leaders, we have to play out the role in our own lives personally and be willing to take the stage publicly on behalf of our beliefs. As we see it, there are three facets to the role of the earth educator: teacher, model, champion. They wer the hidden side of the pyramid in our logo; the three points the whole edifice of earth education rests upon.

We believe:

An environmental teacher is . . .

a person who helps others understand and appreciate change.

An environmental model is . . .

a person who demonstrates forming good environmental habits and breaking bad ones.

An environmental champion is . . .

a person willing to publicly defend other life that cannot defend itself.

A basic premise of earth education is that if we can get individuals to re-cognize the earth (conceptualize it differently), then they will want to re-present it to others (communicate it freshly). Consequently, we have to train the leaders first so they can train others in turn.

"I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught." -- Winston Churchill

Of course, in a sense all earth education programs are training programs for their leaders too. Unfortunately, for many of us our personal environmental bad habits are so ingrained, our understandings and appreciations so weak, our contemporary high energy lifestyles so strong that it will take repeated program "immersions" over time to effect the changes necessary. As a result, it may be more effective and efficient to train some leaders briefly beforehand and let the programs serve as reinforcement for their new understandings later.

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive." -- Albert Einstein

When you learn how to do many things in life, you maintain and improve upon your skill through practice, through repeatedly doing something with what you have learned. Due to the high energy state of much of the western world, it will also require extensive program follow-through to keep all of us focused on and practicing the skills necessary for lessening our own impact upon the earth. We believe the intrinsic motivation required can be maintained for many leaders not only by repeating a program experience, but also by attending our earth education conferences, or become involved with a branch of the institute and its activities. We will look at The Institute for Earth Education in more detail in the final chapter, so now that we have taken a quick look at the WHYS of earth education, we should move on to spend a bit more time on the WHATS.

There are three content areas in our work: the Understandings, the Feelings, the Processings. In other words, an earth education program must include building some basic ecological understandings, developing some good feelings about the earth and its life, and processing those understandings and feelings in specific behavioral changes back at home and school. Or for an easier way fo holding onto those parts, and earth education program must have components that emphasize "the head, the heart, and the hands."

Continue... Chapter Four: Earth Education... The WHATS

Earth Education... A New Beginning Copyright © 1990 The Institute for Earth Education. All Rights Reserved.