Teaching Environmental Problem-Solving: Invitation to High Schools & Nonprofit Organizations

  Joel Tolman           November 3, 2024 - 8:58am

Teaching Our Cities -- a project of Common Ground High School, Urban Farm & Environmental Education Center -- is seeking applications from high schools and nonprofit environment organizations interested in joining in a year-long collaborative effort. 

The goal: To develop, test, improve and share resources and tools that will help young people across New England (and beyond) build capacity as environmental problem-solvers and grow into a new generation of environmental leaders.

Participating schools and organizations will:

  • Contribute to an online resource guide on teaching environmental problem-slving in public schools – including key texts, model curricula, case studies, practice reflections, and sample student work – by developing new resources, sharing existing resources, and providing feedback to strengthen other partners’ contributions.
  • Join in a 2-3 day collaborative teaching environmental problem-solving workshop at Common Ground in late June 2025, focused on sharing and strengthening our approaches to engaging young people as environmental problem-solvers around clean air, water, and land.
  • Receive mini-grants from $250 to $2,000 to support their work (e.g., educational materials, travel to workshops, substitute coverage, stipends for community partners or participating staff), thanks to funding from the Environmental Protection Agency. (While individuals and representatives of government agencies are welcome to join in these collaborative efforts, EPA grant rules mean that only local education agencies and nonprofit organizations are available for mini-grant funds). 

We encourage applications from teams that include both adults and young people, and we are particularly interested in the opportunity to collaborate with other public schools and community organizations actively working to engage young people in solving environmental problems. 

Deadline & Application Process: Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Applications should be submitted via this google form. Your school team can use this google doc to draft your response before submitting -- you can make a copy, add collaborators, and copy and paste into the form when complete.

Have questions? Contact Joel Tolman at jtolman@commongroundct.org or 203.389.4333 x1214

Apply now >>>

About the Author

Joel Tolman

  Project Director, Teaching Our Cities         Common Ground High School

Joel Tolman is Project Director for Teaching Our Cities. He is also Director of Impact & Engagement at Common Ground -- a high school, urban farm, and environmental education center in New Haven, CT.  In this capacity, Joel Tolman leads work to make Common Ground a more effective and inclusive organization – with a focus on strategic planning, growth strategies, evaluation, and community engagement.

Joel came to Common Ground as a classroom teacher in 2003. Through classes including Architecture, Documenting New Haven, El Caribe, and Power, Joel’s students explored and documented New Haven’s neighborhoods, monitored urban air quality, created bilingual oral histories of community elders, secured start-up funding for small social ventures, and presented policy proposals to state legislators.

In 2008, Joel become Common Ground’s Director of Development and Community Engagement. In this capacity, he more than doubled grant revenue and individual giving, helped to launch a major capital campaign, and secured the resources necessary to grow organizational reach significantly.

Before joining the Common Ground faculty, Joel worked for 5 years on high school reform and youth policy issues in Washington, DC – providing technical assistance to school districts and municipalities, writing a number of publications on youth leadership and development, and managing multi-site initiatives related to school reform and out-of-school time. He has a degree in environmental studies from Williams College, and a M.Ed. in social studies education from George Washington University.

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