Educators share the process with their low-income, culturally diverse students and teach that all people have a right to a safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environment. Children in kindergarten through grade 12 pursue service learning projects to spread the word to the community. Students participate in an eight-month mentorship with a professional, during which they learn about environmental careers, environmental health risks in their communities, and community action choices. The knowledge, skills, and discipline acquired in the course enable the students to serve as environmental resources for their communities. This program adapts existing environmental education curricula and field methods to develop a functional environmental education theme unit for predominately minority special education students in an urban multicultural setting at the Kennedy Institute, an ungraded, 12-year special education day program.
Participants strengthen their awareness of real-life local environmental issues.
Students learn about urban air and water pollution and the effects of such pollution on human health and the local ecosystem. They also study the effects of population growth and decline on urban areas and the effects of such changes on climate, as well as discussing job opportunities in the environmental field.