Environmental Literacy & Justice

Environmental literacy is the path to a green world. California law now promotes K-12 environmental literacy. But we need to develop “classroom ready” lessons with community project components.

 Moreover, to date, environmental literacy has been principally germinated in wealthier communities. We need to develop environmental literacy solutions that address the realities of disadvantaged communities.

 We will develop an environmental literacy technology platform and standards-aligned elementary school environmental literacy lesson series that address these realities. We will pilot in National School District, California. 84% of the district’s students are Black or Latino and 78% of the students qualify for reduced-price lunch. 18.3% of the city population is below the poverty line.

 By developing and piloting this program, we will create a powerful education solution for disadvantaged communities. Our work at the margins of education reform will enable us to develop solutions relevant to thousands of such communities around the world.

An environmental literate person is one who is able to conceive and support “ecologically sound, economically prosperous, and equitable communities for present and future generations.” It is not easy to teach environmental literacy because it covers science and society, knowledge and behavior, classroom learning and outdoor projects.

 Even though California is a world leader in promoting environmental literacy, only 45% of teachers actually cover the subject citing it being outside their subject area. There is not enough “classroom ready” and project-friendly content that also meets common core standards.

In addition, most of the existing content has been developed keeping in mind the sensibilities and resources of wealthy communities. The needs and realities of schools in disadvantaged communities, which are often the most negatively environmentally impacted, are rarely addressed in existing environmental literacy lessons.

 Challenges specific to disadvantaged communities include their specific environmental conditions, the shortage of community-based partners, general lack of resources to conduct project-based learning and language challenges among students.

 These challenges only be addressed through local design and implementation, working with local teachers and community activists, and embedding lessons in local compulsions to meet common core standards. This is what we are working on.

Our technology solution has four parts: (1) a community-based partner platform to promote community partners such as parks, aquariums and utilities; (2) a lesson management platform to deliver and track lessons; (3) a badges module to enable students to earn environmental literacy achievements; and (4) a resources and community platform to share resources and build a community of practice. 

Our initial content solution is an environmental literacy lesson series for Grades K-5:

Bananas About Bananas. Students consider the supply chain of a banana, create an environmental map and envision a green supply chain.

My Zero Waste Journey. Students develop and implement a Reduce, Reuse and Recycle plan for their class, home or community.

What’s My Carbon Footprint? Students research their personal, family or community carbon footprint. The class aggregates and discusses findings.

Tough Choices. Students do skits based on choices to place a waste management facility in a wealthy or disadvantaged community.

My Favorite Animal. Students profile an animal in terms of life cycle, ecosystem, threats and solutions.

 How Green is My School? Students research their school in terms of energy, materials and carbon footprint, and design improvements.

Imbalance Between Consumption and Impact. Climate change has disproportionate impact on communities. Some communities consume more energy and goods and services, while other communities produce that energy, store waste or suffer the impact of consumption by other communities.

 The Communities We Want to Serve. Take, for example, National City in California. National School District, a K-6 district located just south of San Diego, CA. Out of the district’s approximately 5,200 students, 84% are Black or Latino and 54.1% of students are English learners. Furthermore, 78% of students in the district qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and 79.9% of students are socio-economically disadvantaged. The 2015-2019 median annual household income was $47,119. In 2019, persons in poverty stood at 18.3% of the population.

National City is currently home to 32 million pounds of hazardous substances and 870,000 cubic feet of toxic or hazardous gases. Just the top 10 polluters release 150,000 lbs. of toxic or smog forming air pollutants per year. In comparison, La Jolla has 3.8 million pounds of hazardous gases.

National City asthma hospitalization rates in 2010 for children ages 0-17 were 122/100,000 compared to a countywide rate of 87.

The National School District has also significant educational challenges. In 2019, English Language Arts achievement was 20.6 points below standard, Mathematics was 41.3 points below standard, and 53.5% of students were making progress towards English language proficiency.

National City is also relatively disadvantaged in terms of community-based partners that provide out-of-school environmental literacy programs. Of such partners, some (such as Ocean Connectors) have managed to continue operations during the pandemic. Others (such as the Paradise Creek Wetlands) are shuttered and may find it difficult to reopen.

We want to serve communities across the United States – and around the world – that are relatively disadvantaged in terms of environmental impact and resources.

Specific Environmental Literacy Challenges. Such communities have very specific needs and realities, and we hope to design environmental education programs that address these challenges.

These communities are often impacted by climate change and environmental policies in specific ways and an effective environmental literacy program must address local issues and impacts. For example, National City faces critical questions of smog and asthma.

These communities are at the receiving end of an environmental justice imbalance. Building awareness of the environmental justice imbalance – and development of positive ways to address the imbalance – will be part of our environmental literacy lesson series.

Change is beginning to happen but often disadvantaged communities are not aware of how similarly placed communities are innovating. We hope that our program will aid in identifying and sharing best practices for transforming disadvantaged communities from an environmental perspective (e.g., community projects in the Bronx to change landfills to parks and in Maryland to develop wetlands).

Disadvantaged communities have fewer resources, including fewer community-based partners that provide outdoor and experiential learning opportunities so essential to environmental literacy. Working with leading environmental literacy experts, we will develop a toolkit to enable parks, aquariums, utilities and companies to develop standards-aligned outdoor and experiential learning opportunities in disadvantaged communities.

Many disadvantaged communities struggle with learning attainment levels and also use of English language mastery among students for whom English is a second language. Working with schools in National City, we will develop environmental literacy lessons attuned to the achievement and language levels of students.

Impact. By designing and implementing community-relevant, standards-aligned environmental literacy lessons, and strengthening community-based partners networks, we hope we can build awareness among students, educators, and family and community members, and provide pathways for positive impact at an individual, school, family and community level.

Environmental literacy requires collaboration between schools, community-based partners and families in online, hybrid and physical settings.

Our technology platform uniquely aggregates outdoor learning programs, in-class and out-of-school lessons and projects and information resources, enables collaboration, and recognizes student achievements.

 Our content solutions provide highest quality lessons and projects designed to address the needs of disadvantaged communities. Our lessons include project-and-activity based learning that develop 21st century learning skills. Teacher guides enable teachers with limited environmental literacy knowledge to deliver lessons. Parent guides in English and Spanish will guide parents on extending environmental literacy lessons in the home.

Three of our four technology modules need community inputs: (1) our lesson management platform; (2) our badges module; and (3) our resources and community platform.

 We have designed two of our six lesson series. The first has been piloted in schools in California. We have received very positive feedback and are now designing the other lesson series.

We will next partner with six elementary schools within the San Diego County National School District to pilot our technology and lesson series. We’re also talking to districts with similar demographics in Rialto and Montebello, and we may run pilots there too.

At least 36 teachers will pilot the lesson series over one semester. Approximately 1,260 students will be reached through our pilots. We’ll work with our partners to determine the most appropriate way to measure our impact on common core skills as well as their environmental literacy.

We have developed or are developing four interlinked solutions:

Community-Based Partner Hub (already developed – see https://caeli.greenguardians.com/). Through this platform (1) community-based partners may register themselves and their environmental literacy programs and (2) counties may register themselves and select community-based partners to recommend to their schools. There is no equivalent platform, and six counties have already obtained paying licenses.

 Lesson Management Platform (under development). This will enable teachers to select and deploy environmental literacy lessons. We are both developing our own lesson series and have curated perhaps the largest database anywhere of third party environmental literacy lessons.

 Badges Module (under development). This will enable teachers to award achievement badges to students across environmental literacy domains: Biodiversity, Ecosystems, Waste Management, Pollution, Resource Conservation, Sustainable Human Development, Health, Climate Change, Disasters and Conflicts, Environmental Justice and Leadership.

 Resources and Community Platform (under development). This will be populated by a substantial trove of environmental literacy resources we have curated, and will enable educators, experts, students and parents to share insights and experiences.

In addition to curating content, we realized there is a real need for (1) a starter lesson series that may be used by teachers and parents with limited knowledge of environmental literacy and (2) lesson series that responsive to disadvantaged communities. Our content solution will address these needs.

The core innovation of our solution is to create a comprehensive technology and content platform that can help spread environmental literacy learning in all kinds of school districts.

We are just getting started but we have signed up on a fee paying basis six counties and school districts in California which have 106 public schools and 70,000 students.

By 2022, we target serving 440 schools, 3,500 teachers and 65,000 students.

By 2023, we target serving 2,000 schools, 15,000 teachers and 200,000 students.

By 2024, we target serving 6,000 schools, 50,000 teachers and 800,000 students.

We are still working on impact measurement.

Full time staff 8

Part time staff 3

We have deep experience gathered over twenty years in USA, China, Singapore, Pakistan, Myanmar and many other countries in designing learning technologies and learning solutions. 

Our team members have led or participated in the design and development of nine learning management systems and over 1,800 digital courses in 30+ languages

Our team includes people from China, Pakistan, Singapore and USA and includes Black, East Asian, Hispanic, South Asian and White members. 

Many of us have worked together for years and we  are deeply committed to diversity, equity and inclusion - it is the right thing to do and it works for us. We fully support MIT Solve's commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Our goals are to continue expanding our team through our demonstrated commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

We would love to learn from MIT Solve and network with your community.

We have been intensely focused on our solution development and on California. We need help now in expanding our network, pitching more effectively, and building relationships outside California.

We will use the ASA Prize for Equitable Education to deepen our capacity to serve disadvantaged school districts in advancing environmental literacy.

We will use the GM Prize to deepen our capacity to serve disadvantaged school districts in advancing environmental literacy.

We will use the Innovation for Women to deepen our capacity to serve females in disadvantaged school districts in advancing environmental literacy.

We will use the GSR Prize to deepen our capacity to serve disadvantaged school districts in advancing environmental literacy.