Celebrate National Environmental Education Week!
EE Week is April 11-17, and Project Learning Tree, a program of the American Forest Foundation, is supporting EE Week through its national network of thousands of educators and national, state, and local partners dedicated to increasing the environmental literacy of K-12 students.
This year, EE Week’s theme is Be Water and Energy Wise. Our nation’s water and energy resources are increasingly important topics of discussion, not just in the news, but in classrooms and homes as well. In the United States, generating power consumes 3 percent of our nation’s water annually and 13 percent of the energy produced in this country each year is used to treat, transport, and heat our water. Conserving water saves energy, and vice versa.
Register today to participate in EE Week and gain access to a wide variety of free environmental education resources. In addition to EE Week’s library of resources and curricula on water and energy, there’s a new resource page for educators on the connection between water and energy that addresses the importance of conserving both to protect the planet and reduce costs. The water-energy connection is complex, but it provides an excellent opportunity to get students thinking about the interrelatedness of ecological and environmental concerns.
Also, educators might want to check out Project Learning Tree’s GreenSchools! Investigations focusing on Water and Energy. Through hands-on investigations and analysis based on critical thinking and problem solving skills, students establish comprehensive school environmental baseline data and develop action plans to make their school greener and healthier, and in many cases save money. Visit www.pltgreenschools.org to learn what students can do to reduce the environmental footprint of their school.
