Green Schools & Environmental Education

Jonee Kulman Brigham's work in Green Schools and Environmental Education (GSEE) supports sustainable educational facility performance and environmental education related to the designed environment - integrating the two areas into a single project where possible. Brigham brings a broad background in sustainable building design, technical analysis, guideline development, post-occupancy building evaluation, and design assistance to serve the educational sector in facility improvement. Brigham is passionate about education and outreach and the lessons the built environment has to offer environmental education and brings experience with teaching, and interpretive projects about the role of the built environment in environmental issues.

"I am particularly interested in the intersection of school greening efforts and environmental education about the built environment of schools. At any age, from Pre-K to post-secondary, the conveniences of the built environment can make it hard to see our interdependence with natural systems. But we can challenge this and interpret the built environment as a tool to reveal interconnection and teach systems thinking. There is a great opportunity to incorporate literacy about the designed environment into broader efforts at eco-literacy and environmental awareness that goes beyond celebrating notable green features, to understanding the built environment as part of larger social, economic, and ecological systems. Even in an average school building, design and the designed environment can be used to better connect students with nature and make the building function as a learning experiment for explorations in areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) as well as the arts and humanities. The process of greening existing learning environments or designing new green learning environments offers even more opportunity to use those built environments as a learning laboratory while increasing pride of place and connection to local community."

Current and Ongoing Projects

Minnesota GreenStep Schools Program Development and Pilot

www.mngreenstepschools.org

MN GreenStep Schools is a statewide best practices framework for K-12 schools to advance their building/site sustainability and student environmental education achievement. The project fills the need for a consistent and beginner-friendly green schools framework, and builds from the successful delivery model of MN GreenStep Cities and the nationally recognized green school performance areas of Green Ribbon Schools. The project connects existing state and private programs and expertise with schools in the context of a step-by-step "on-ramp" to challenge, assist and recognize schools moving toward higher performance, compatible with Green Ribbon or LEED.

The project is led by Jonee Kulman Brigham, Senior Research Fellow , Minnesota Design Center
with support from the MN GreenStep School Steering Committee, and a network of technical and practice advisors.

Current Funding: Minnesota Pollution Control Agency

See www.mngreenstepschools.org for development and funding history and a full team list.

Water Values--Advancing Informal STEM Learning through Native Voices, Planetariums, and Reciprocal Collaboration

Funded by NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL), The Water Values pilot study explores how Native water stories, science, and sustainability learning can be presented to public audiences for reciprocal benefit and learning. The pilot study brings together the long standing Gidaa Camp (a Native STEAM education program at the Fond du Lac Reservation) and the Bell Museum. The youth will collaborate with the Bell Museum to create a public planetarium program based on water stories from their water learning journey using a model for art-led, environmental education called Earth Systems Journey* (ESJ) developed by MDC's Jonee Brigham. The interdisciplinary project is led by Bhaskar Upadhyay of Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Diana Dalbotten of St. Anthony Falls Lab, and Jonee Brigham of MDC, in collaboration with Bell Museum, UMN-Duluth faculty and staff, and Gidaa Camp leaders, teachers, and youth mentors.

Read the NSF Award Abstract.

*Notice: Ms. Brigham is the owner of Full Spring Studio, which owns the Earth Systems Journey curriculum model used in this research. This relationship has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota in accordance with its conflict of interest polices.

Mississippi River Water Journey Camps

(Initial Phase: 2015-2016) Repeating annuallyFunding: Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF)Website: http://waterjourneycamps.blogspot.com

“Water Journey Camps” get children outdoors exploring the natural environment, doing service plantings, and teaching the public how to conserve water and improve water quality to help protect natural areas. Two different one-week summer camps: “Water Journey: Drink” and “Water Journey: Rain,” will be held twice each (a total of four camps) at the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. The camps will be offered as one of the specialized programs available for children to attend during the University of Minnesota Recreation & Wellness Summer Youth Program (more information at http://www.recwell.umn.edu/youth/structure.php). “Water Journey Camps” will serve youth in ages 6-8 in one set of the camp offerings and age 9-11 in the other set.

The camps use an engaging arts/science adventure approach, called Earth Systems Journey*, developed by Brigham, to bridge a gap between environmental education focused on conservation behavior and environmental education focused on downstream impacts of conservation. By revealing the water infrastructure that connects daily use of water with what happens at the other end of the pipes, conservation lessons can be made more relevant to students’ experience. The camps are designed to address four areas that research indicates enhance stewardship behavior. (1) Children need more opportunities for outdoor experiential environmental education to form bonds with nature. (2) People must see the connection between their actions in the human-built environment and the associated impacts in the natural environment. (3) Children need opportunities to contribute through service activities and using their learning to help others in order to enhance their stewardship competence and identity. (4) Children and the public they will help educate need to have local, place-based examples of how their actions affect the natural areas in their community to increase the immediacy and relevance of stewardship.

*Notice: Ms. Brigham is the owner of Full Spring Studio, which owns the Earth Systems Journey curriculum model used in this project. This relationship has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota in accordance with its conflict of interest polices.

Selected Prior Projects

The following projects were led or co-led by Jonee Kulman Brigham while at the University of Minnesota and inform her work in Green Schools and Environmental Education.

Watershed Stories

Watershed Stories: Learners Exploring Their Place in the Ecosystem (2018-2019)

Funding: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

PI: Jennifer Frisch, Associate Professor, College of Education and Human Service Professions, University of Minnesota, Duluth

Co-PI: Jonee Kulman Brigham, Senior Researcher, Minnesota Design Center, College of Design, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

School Partner: Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School in Duluth, Minnesota

“Watershed Stories: Learners Exploring their Place in the Ecosystem” grounds STEM learning about the watershed through the engagement of personal inquiry and story, while aligning with NOAA’s definition of a “Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience” (MWEE). Teachers at Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School in Duluth, Minnesota, will participate in a training to learn how to use GIS Story Maps with their students in order to explore their schoolyard and its connection to the watershed. During the training, teachers will explore a model for art-led, place-based, experiential environmental education called Earth Systems Journey* (ESJ). The ESJ experience will be used as an illustration of tools teachers can use to frame an environment-themed interdisciplinary curriculum, and they will be supported in adapting elements to meet their teaching strengths and standards.

River Journey

2014-2015 Fellowship Project for Institute on the Environment:

River Journey: Exploring the Value of the Mississippi RiverAn Earth Systems Journey at River's Edge Academy

This project took place at River's Edge Academy Charter Environmental High School, where Brigham collaborated with teachers, staff and students on a year long "Earth Systems Journey*" of water through their school, tracing the flows to the Mississippi River, both upstream and downstream. This project is multi-faceted and supported by many partners. Some of the planning and development was done during Brigham's time as a Buckman Fellow 2013-2014. The Institute on the Environment at the U of MN is provided funding as part of Brigham's Resident Fellowship there. And the project was one of the focus areas of Brigham's year as a Visiting Scholar in the Art Education Program at the U of MN College of Education and Human Development. With the assistance of project partner U-Spatial, students used online mapping software (ArcGIS online) to share their learning about the water cycle and increase public awareness. Community contributors included the National Park Service, St. Paul Regional Water Services, Metropolitan Council Environmental Services, the Lower Mississippi River Watershed Management Organization and others. You can read more about it on the River Journey blog. The Earth Systems Journey* (ESJ) is a curriculum framework for expeditionary, place-based environmental education. ESJ teaches ecological/environmental content, principles, analysis and decision skills in way that integrates human-engineered systems with natural systems. ESJ combines experiential education in systems thinking with the behavior-changing impact of story in the form of a Hero’s Journey. ESJ uses art and story as the core structure of the curriculum in order to engage and motivate students and unify their learning in a larger context of meaning. Upon this story-based core, interdisciplinary application of environmental education curriculum brings humanities into dialogue with science and engineering studies so that environmental issues can be considered from many points of view and ways of understanding. Students’ expeditions followed the actual flow of water through their school’s building and grounds and into the surrounding community to explore how water interconnects them with human-engineered infrastructure and natural systems. Over the year, students document their place-based water studies using digital mapping technology that allows for collaborative and interdisciplinary analysis and which will also serve as a public, online dissemination of their learning. The ESJ model has been successfully piloted at the concept development level with preschool and kindergartners in 2011.

Teacher Training: "Mapping the Journey: Experiential, Place-based Environmental Education and Spatial Thinking using ArcGIS Online"

Esri ConnectED Grant for teacher training, led by U-Spatial. Training took place summer 2015. More information at the project website.

Art, Story, and Infrastructure: A Model for Experiential Interconnection in Environmental Education

This project gathered an interdisciplinary team of University faculty and outside partners around the topic of how to use place-based interaction with infrastructure, interpreted through art, story, and science to create an experiential and informed sense of interconnection of our daily use of resources with the engineering and natural systems in which they interact. The project provided input in the development of a replicable curriculum model based on a concurrent research process and demonstration project. The project was led by Jonee Kulman Brigham and funded by a mini-grant from Institute on the Environment. Completed March 2012. See project summary for more information.

*Notice: This work was related to graduate studies of Jonee Brigham. The body of this work, documented in her thesis, is now owned by Full Spring Studio, LLC. Ms. Brigham is the owner of Full Spring Studio, which owns the Earth Systems Journey curriculum model used in this research. This relationship has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota in accordance with its conflict of interest polices.

Conversation-E: Science + Art in Dialogue and Service to Sustainability

This interdisciplinary pilot project engaged artists, writers and scientists in conversation and exploration of the research at the Cloquet Forestry Center surrounding the issue of global climate change and its effects on the ecology of the climate-sensitive NE Minnesota forests . The results included an art/literature/environmental education exhibition and panel discussion based on that collaborative work at the Institute on the Environment. Conversation-E is a pilot for how Institute on the Environment can creatively collaborate across disciplines and with outside partners to foster innovative and effective public outreach about the work of its researchers. The name, “Conversation-E,” is inspired by the roots: “convers-at-IonE,” pointing to the opportunity to expand the interdisciplinary conversations already at the Institute to better integrate the arts. The “E” is for Environment, one of the most critical conversations of our time. The project was co-led by Jonee Kulman Brigham Roslye Ultan, Peter Reich, and Rebecca Montgomery, and was funded by a mini-grant from Institute on the Environment. Completed 2014. See website for more information.

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