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Sustainability in the Curriculum and Student Engagement

Room: 204
Time: 11:30am – 12:30pm

TreePeople will share how it engages school communities in the green schoolyard design process while gathering their input to help shape their schoolyard as we work with parents, teachers, administrators, students and parents to collaboratively envision a green schoolyard.

This session will also cover the curricular components that we bring to schools through a set of lesson plans designed to educate students about the schoolyard renovation over the course of three lessons starting with tree biology continuing on to measuring temperature on their campus and culminating in a schoolyard design exercise.

Learning Objectives:

  • Identify key school community stakeholders in participatory green schoolyard design.
  • Create a green schoolyard school community engagement plan that invites the school community to contribute their lived experiences and goals to the design process for their schoolyard.
  • Provide a rationale for transforming the landscape at their school site and how it can integrate into their school’s culture.
  • Create a vision for how to incorporate a green schoolyard into the curriculum, including the outline of potential lesson ideas

Speakers:

Eric Wilson, Green Infrastructure Program Manager, TreePeople
Bertilla Baudiniere, Green Infrastructure Design Principal, TreePeople
Mary Hillemeier, Policy & Research Senior Coordinator, TreePeople
Saira Singh, School Greening Education Coordinator, TreePeople


Eric Wilson works as a project manager at TreePeople in the Green Infrastructure department. In this role he oversees green schoolyard projects at various locations across the educational spectrum, from early childhood to high school. As part of this work, he helped shape the school greening curriculum.

Eric previously served as Director of Sustainability at a charter management organization in the Los Angeles metro and taught at a one-of-a-kind college preparatory school in a wilderness setting that promotes a deep connection to nature. One of Eric’s educational passions is getting students out of the classroom and into the world around them.  

Eric holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Anthropology and Human Biology from Emory University in Atlanta, an M.A. in teaching from New York University, and a PhD in Educational Studies and Research from the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Education and Human Development. His dissertation — Facilities as Teaching Tools: A Transformative Participatory Professional Development Experience — focused on using the local and built environment to serve as a living textbook. This research guides his current work, specifically as it pertains to green schoolyards and converting hardscape into outdoor learning spaces.


Mary Hillemeier is a Policy Associate at TreePeople, where she focuses on building support for policies that advance green schoolyard transformations, extreme heat resilience, community forestry, and urban soil health. Prior to TreePeople, she managed a farm-based youth leadership program for high school students where she learned the transformative power of outdoor learning. She holds an MPH in Health Equity and an MSW in Community Management and Policy Practice from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a certificate in Ecological Horticulture from the University of California, Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology. She spends as much time as possible adventuring outdoors and the joy and commitment guiding her work is fueled by those experiences.


Saira Singh (she/they) is the School Greening Education Coordinator at TreePeople, where she designs outdoor education curriculum, leads teacher workshops, and facilitates outdoor learning experiences for students at partner schools. As a community advocate with experience in both the non-profit and public sectors, she has a passion for environmentalism, outdoor education, and sustainability!


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