Notes From A Teacher
Today was the first day of the first time I’m teaching Advanced Environmental Sustainability. I’ve had three semesters of what we call EES–Exploring Environmental Sustainability, a class I proposed and designed myself two years ago. I was nervous and excited–nervous because I’m team teaching this class with our Environmental Studies teacher and I’ve never teamed before, and excited because all the kids were returners who had done well the first time around.
Our new class is going to focus on one area of sustainability–energy. We’re going to look at energy resources, how consumer choices, public policy, and politics influence our energy consumption, how building construction interacts with energy, and how energy use can contribute to pollution. Today, we just had a review. It has been a year since a few of my kids had taken our intro class, so we wanted to see what they would remember. Once we got going, it turns out they remembered a lot. They were able to name several renewable and non-renewable resources, describe greenhouse gases and how they contribute to climate change, and talk about where we get most of our energy from. They knew several of the plusses and minuses to each type of energy and where some of it comes from.
Renowned University of Alberta ecologist 
