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Photo Caption: A.P. U.S. Government Students -- who provided input on our Clean Air, Water & Land Resource Guide -- lead a workshop for other Common Ground students.
Schools across Connecticut and the country teach civics courses – building students’ understanding of U.S. Government, and their capacity to engage as active citizens. Everything that's taught in a typical civics course -- from separation of powers, to federalism, to the branches of government, to the role of federal agencies -- is connected to environmental protection. Using clean air, water, and land case studies as part of civics courses can make learning relevant, deepens understanding, and helps students grow as environmental problem-solvers.
Recognizing these connections, Common Ground social studies teacher & curriculum and instruction lead Jeremy Stone took on the task of developing a new resource guide. He got help from students in his U.S. Government course -- Wolfgang Stansel, Mitchell Dinkins, Mekhi Knox, Cye Gonzalez, Maxwell Pina, and Claire Armstrong -- who helped reality check the plans he was developing. The effort was part of a two-year effort, fueled by a grant from the U.S. EPA, to help students at Common Ground and across New England grow their capacity as environmental problem-solvers.
Check out this new toolkit.
This resource guide gives teachers and schools tools they need to integrate themes, case studies, projects and activities related to clean air, water and land – the core priorities of the U.S. Protection Agency – into civics. We developed it for Common Ground and our Teaching Our Cities partner schools, but are excited to share it more broadly as well. If you use it and have feedback, please share it with Jeremy Stone (jstone@commongroundct.org) and Joel Tolman (jtolman@commogroundct.org).
The development of this resource guide has been funded in part by the EPA under assistance agreement 00A01451 to the New Haven Ecology Project. It has not been formally reviewed by EPA. The views expressed in this document are solely those of the New Haven Ecology Project and our collaborators and EPA does not endorse any products or commercial services mentioned in this publication.