We all know that teachers need to use their state academic standards. We also know that environmental education content and skills are well-represented in most state academic standards. It's just a matter of finding the links. One way of making these links explicit is to use Excellence in Environmental Education: Guidelines for Learning (K-12) as the framework and to create a crosswalk with your state academic standards.
Aligning your state academic standards to the EE Guidelines for Learning (K-12) will help teachers and other educators design and implement a comprehensive, cohesive, standards-based environmental education curriculum. It will help educators map out the best ways of infusing environmental education throughout the school year.
Additionally, this crosswalk can be a useful first step in the development of your state
Environmental Literacy Plan (NCLI). Using the EE Guidelines for Learning (K-12)as your framework, you will identify the state academic standards that support environmental education. Importantly, you will also identify the gaps! This can give you a road map for working with your state department of education.
To provide examples, attached are crosswalks between the
K-12 EE Guidelines for Learning and the state academic standards for Oregon, Maine and Texas. Let us know if you have created a crosswalk and we will share it here too.
See the other posts that align the K-12 Learner Guidelines with the Ocean Literacy Principles and the Climate Literacy Principles.
STATE CROSSWALKS
Oregon:
EE and Oregon Achievement Standards Crosswalk
Maine:
Maine 4th Grade Crosswalk
Maine 8th Grade Crosswalk
Maine 11th Grade Crosswalk
Texas DRAFT Crosswalks:
Science Elementary School Crosswalk
Science Middle School Crosswalk
Science High School Crosswalk
Social Studies Elementary School Crosswalk
Social Studies Middle School Crosswalk
Social Studies High School Crosswalk