sTRUCTURING

Structuring is our way of talking about the skeletal framework of earth education programs. Of course, when we use that term, we are talking about building complete programs that include all three of our WHATS (the understandings, feelings, and processings). We are talking about how we design our learning experiences for each of those components in a focused, sequential, cumulative fashion. And since we want our model programs to serve as powerful springboard experiences for what takes place back at school and home, we are also talking about how we make those activities interactive and dynamic. Finally, we are talking about how we put those pieces together into a whole -- an overall program that is so carefully crafted and so rich in detail that it becomes synergistic, or more than the sum of its parts.

Since the last section of this book will deal with program building in some detail, our task here is to look at some "structural" guidelines that we follow in both crafting and conducting earth education experiences. We have broken them down into four things to do and four things to avoid.

Things To Avoid:

naming and labeling
talking without a focal point
playing twenty questions
drifting into activity entropy

Things To Do:

create magical learning adventures
focus on sharing and doing
emphasize the 3 R's: reward, reinforce, relate
model positive environmental behaviors

Continue... The Living More Lightly Profile

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