Cascadian Sustainability Passport Description

Teachers are busy people. Imagine it was easier for them to find free classroom exercises. Imagine also that those materials were also designed to satisfy official learning standards, and that they were created by local teachers and experts, and focused on local issues and processes. Imagine also that teachers and students (of every age) could track learning achievement in personalized “passports,” rich with local environmental, social and civic knowledge. This is the dream of the Cascadian Passport project – a system to emphasize local knowledge and learning opportunities, encouraging ecological and social awareness of the Cascadian bioregion.

For learners, the passports would record their steps towards a deepening understanding of place. For educators, the passport system would provide easily accessible learning materials, based on local topics likely to resonate with students. It would also help local experts (e.g., community institutions, elders, scientists) to share their knowledge with their communities and promote civic involvement. Over time, we believe this would lead to an expanded awareness of local ecological and social processes, along with greater community engagement.

Most users would initially experience the passport project as a website where customized passport-like documents could be created, downloaded, and printed. Teachers could also use the website to create customized “passports” for students, as well as to identify learning materials and opportunities relevant to a range of subjects (e.g., mathematics, history) and topics (e.g., resource management, native history). They would be able to provide feedback on their experiences with those materials, or participate in the generation of new materials. They could also work with local experts using collaborative wiki-like tools, developing new learning materials and improving existing projects.

Of course, this is an ambitious project which will require the sustained efforts of many people. It will need to be developed in phases, with ongoing research, testing, and outreach. Initially, the most important task will be research and outreach to potential collaborators and users from local teachers and organizations. The principle goal of this phase would be to identify organizations already working with K-12 students, the issues they teach, and the geographical extent of their outreach. At the same time, we would need to identify a handful of teachers and/or schools willing to participate in initial “field tests” of the passport concept, and to offer feedback to help improve the project’s design and implementation. We will also need to identify potential funding and partnership opportunities so that we can begin the advanced design and technical work (e.g., design of the passport and web-based elements) as soon as possible. The next phase would focus on those field tests, and on establishing an oversight board of educators and experts to ensure that learning units are accurate, engaging, and age-appropriate. Meanwhile, we would want to begin development of the content creation and management system for the web portal itself. Basing this “back end” on open-source CMS systems (e.g., Drupal, Plone) should allow us to focus the bulk of our technical efforts on creating an interface that is attractive and intuitive to use. The results of the ongoing research into potential users and existing learning programs would be used to populate this database for the next phase of beta-testing and further outreach. Our hope is that by creating an easy-to-use, extensible, and user-driven system to create localized learning materials (and opportunities), along with creative promotion of these functionalities to schools, educators, and civic organizations, that the passport project will gather a momentum of its own. Ultimately, we envision that the passport project could be adapted to locales and regions beyond Cascadia, or to establish a global network of localized learning units.

Local Knowledge and Local Education

As an ecologically grounded framework for regional collaboration, the passport program would provide a mechanism by which regional organizations (both public and private) to foster an awareness of the bioregion as a whole, and improve general public understanding of the biophysical, social, and cultural systems as they relate to bioregional sustainability. Children would be exposed to fun projects that produce civic and academic achievement, and teachers would have additional educational resources.

To provide incentives for students, the passport tracks achievement, similar to “merit badges” in scouting, or National Park stamps . Children who successfully complete the program could be further engaged to help others who are just starting, to help develop new passport tasks, or to improve existing materials. It is also likely that the lessons central to the passport project would get the attention of parents.

It is important that the passports – the physical objects given to students – include useful information, such as a map of the Cascadian bioregion . As a personalized record of achievement, the Cascadian Passport would track progress through a series of tasks designed to deepen awareness and understanding of a range of processes (ecological, social, hydrological, biological, etc) relevant to sustainability within the bioregion. Art organizations could contribute creative formatting that is itself educational. For instance, the passports could also be designed so that each contained a unique clue or puzzle piece that yields meaning only in combination with other passports.

The first few pages (as in ordinary passports) could have sustainability-specific content (e.g., glossary of key principles, contact info for parks, environmental agencies, environmental organizations, important laws, legal rights/obligations). At the same time, the Passport will increase the public visibility of those organizations and their principal goals.

By helping these organizations to develop materials that are developmentally appropriate, Sustainable Cascadia will also support parents and educators in their efforts. The underlying content development engine – a “Learning Unit Center, akin to a structured wiki – would include links to issue-specific standards and reference materials. For example, a Learning Unit focused on native history might include links to the reading GLEs for a targeted age group, History Link, native historical websites, etc. To ensure that such materials are timely and appropriate, the portal could support “flagging” or simple active editing.

Other Possibilities

Working with local and regional organizations to develop materials for the Cascadian Passport program, we not only raise their public visibility and provide context for their actions, but may also increase the potential that students (and their families) might become more engaged with those groups. Sustainability-focused material will be more vivid when placed in a whole-systems perspective, alongside other place-based learning opportunities.

The passport program may also be mutually supportive of sustainability-related businesses. Levels of completion of Passport material offer free entrance to events, discounts, etc. Integration with local development programs (e.g., Interra Puget Sound Community Change Card) and educational programs (CEL’s program on Education and Civic Engagement) might further broader community interests, as well.