Professional Development Topics and Descriptions

Curriculum Based Topics

• Buy, Use, Toss? A Closer Look at the Things We Buy
• Climate Change: Connections and Solutions
• Engaging English Language Learners and Striving Readers with Global Issues Using 21st Century Skills
• Engaging Students in Conservation: Protecting the Endangered Snow Leopard
• Fun Global Sustainability Lessons for Elementary School
• Global Issues, Sustainable Solutions
• Sustainability by the Numbers: Using Foundational Algebra and Geometry to Address Real World Issues
• Understanding Sustainability: 2-Week Unit for Middle School Science
• Understanding Sustainability: 2-Week Unit for High School Social Studies

Buy, Use, Toss? A Closer Look at the Things We Buy

The global materials economy doesn’t end at our front doors - it quietly continues to landfills, incinerators, and recyclers. Knowing the story behind the things we buy, use, and toss can help us to consume in ways that improve our lives and the lives of others. In this hands-on workshop, take part in interdisciplinary lessons from a free online curriculum unit that explore the life cycle of products and the multifaceted aspects of global production and consumption. Teachers will be equipped to engage their students in a meaningful exploration of what it takes to get consumer products into their hands (extraction, production, distribution, advertising) then out of their lives (disposal, reuse, recycling), and their role in making informed, responsible choices that take into account the interconnected nature of production and consumption. Students will be better able to evaluate their consumption choices and habits in light of environmental, economic, and social impacts.

Climate Change: Connections and Solutions

This session walks through Facing the Future’s 2-week units on climate change for middle and high school. Participants will engage in hands-on examples of several lessons on topics including carbon dioxide trends, fuel sources, environmental justice issues, and economic solutions to climate change. The fully-planned out units are aligned with national science and social studies standards and include daily activities, student handouts, lesson extensions, reflection questions, additional resources, action project ideas, student readings, and assessments of student learning.

Engaging English Language Learners and Striving Readers with Global Issues Using 21st Century Skills

Prepare students for the literacy demands of the 21^st century with Making Connections. Using global issues as a framework, language learning becomes purposeful as students develop skills and apply them to current events. They gain the skills and knowledge to excel academically, become informed about important issues, and contribute positively to their communities. Participate in differentiated lessons that provide engaging practice in reading, speaking, and listening using diverse texts with multiple comprehension strategies supported by graphic organizers and instructor modeling.

Engaging Students in Conservation: Protecting the Endangered Snow Leopard

In this workshop, participants will walk through Engaging Students in Conservation: Protecting the Endangered Snow Leopard, an interdisciplinary 1-2 week unit that includes five dynamic lessons and culminates with a service learning project. This unit is designed for 5-8th grade students in science and social studies. We’ll explore snow leopards, their ecosystem, and human-wildlife conflicts that exist where people and snow leopards overlap. By participating in some of the lessons, participants will also learn how to teach about community-based conservation and engage students in a project to protect snow leopards in Central Asia.

Fun Global Sustainability Lessons for Elementary School

Experience how global sustainability can be an engaging context for teaching core content and skils in primary school! This session walks through Facing the Future's K-4 curriculum guide, which includes four lessons addressing key concepts related to sustainability: culture and identity, connections to food and the environment, biodiversity, and systems dynamics. The lessons link to well-known children's literature and involve diverse perspectives and learning modes, such as roleplays, singing, art, stories, writing, and speaking. Each lesson is aligned with national standards and comes with a rubric for assessment. Participants receive a copy of the curriculum guide, Teaching Global Sustainability in the Primary Grades.

Global Issues, Sustainable Solutions

Come see how easy it can be to incorporate complex global issues into your teaching with Facing the Future's Global Issues and Sustainable Solutions! Discover hands-on activities to enliven classroom discussion, stimulate critical thinking, and help students relate to issues such as population, poverty, consumption, conflict, and the environment. We'll explore interconnections, impacts, and solutions – along with key resource trends that drive economic, environmental, social, and security issues.

Sustainability by the Numbers: Using Foundational Algebra and Geometry to Address Real World Issues

Engage middle school students with contemporary issues like carbon footprint, national debt, sustainable design, renewable energy, and population growth in your math classes. In this workshop you’ll participate in hands-on geometry and algebra lessons that use real world data to engage students with the numbers in real world contexts that are relevant to their own lives. Lessons from Facing the Future’s Real World Math textbook provide the techniques and content knowledge necessary to teach about global issues in the 21st century.

Understanding Sustainability: 2-Week Unit for Middle School Science

This interactive session walks through Facing the Future’s 2-week unit on sustainability for middle school science. This “plug-in” unit is designed for science teachers who have not previously used Facing the Future curriculum, and/or who are looking for a single cohesive unit to teach about sustainability issues in their science curriculum. Each of the unit's nine lessons is fully planned out and includes key concepts and vocabulary, homework assignments, extension projects, and assessments. Student readings are also included. Participants will gain access to a free download of the unit and feel prepared to integrate it into their science classes right away.

Understanding Sustainability: 2-Week Unit for High School Social Studies

Engage your students in an examination of what it means to be a sustainable community, democracy, and civilization. This workshop provides a tour of Facing the Future’s Understanding Sustainability unit which includes concepts such as resource consumption, governance, and civic engagement. Appropriate for Contemporary World Problems, World History, Civics, Geography, and Global Issues classes the unit includes eight stand-alone, activity-based lessons, student readings, assignments, assessments, and action project ideas. Your students will gain skills in critical thinking, historical analysis, mapping, problem-solving, and collaboration.

Sustainability and Global Issues Topics

• Bridging the Achievement Gap through Global Education
• Building Bridges over Troubled Water: Cross-curricular Resources and Action Opportunities for Teaching about Water
• Connecting Your Classroom to the World through Service Learning
• Fueling the Future: Energy Needs, Sources and Choices
• Global Sustainability: An Integrated Context for Learning
• Hands-on Lessons on Global Equity and Quality of Life
• Ideas and Resources for Implementing Effective Social Studies CBAs
• Seeing the Big Picture: Media Literacy and Global Issues
• Teaching about Governance, Policy-Making, and Global Issues
• Using Systems Thinking to Educate Effective Global Citizens
• What's Ailing Us? Exploring Global Health Connections

Bridging the Achievement Gap through Global Education

Improve achievement for ALL students, regardless of class, race, or ethnicity, by equipping yourself with well-tested strategies that help students become active participants in their learning, make meaningful connections between academic abstractions and socio-cultural realities, and improve their critical thinking skills. Join us in taking a fresh look at closing the achievement gap with global issues curriculum that is relevant, cognitively rich, and standards-based.

Building Bridges over Troubled Water: Cross-curricular Resources and Action Opportunities for Teaching about Water

Make a splash in your classroom! This workshop introduces local and global water issues. Using graphs, trends, and fact sheets we explore connections between water and other global issues such as population, poverty, consumption, conflict, and the environment. Participants will engage in hands-on activities to bring water alive in the classroom. Lessons include an investigation of everyday items and their water inputs, a water walk, and information about water quality and conservation.

Connecting Your Classroom to the World through Service Learning

Spark interest, participation and performance in the classroom by inspiring your students to take constructive action in the world! Through meaningful work that meets real societal needs, service learning teaches students key academic and interpersonal skills. We'll review the latest research on the benefits of service learning, and provide examples of how teachers have integrated service learning into various subjects to address global issues in their local and global communities. The session includes activity-based lessons connecting students to global issues and action projects that develop their critical thinking, imagination, and initiative.

Fueling the Future: Energy Needs, Sources and Choices

Join us in connecting the dots between energy sources, human choices, economic trade-offs, and environmental challenges!  This interactive session provides engaging interdisciplinary lessons about sustainable choices, renewable and non-renewable sources, carbon emissions, and the politics of energy. Participants will explore how to make the interconnected issues of society, energy, and the environment relevant for young people, while promoting critical thinking and understanding from multiple perspectives.

Global Sustainability: An Integrated Context for Learning

Global sustainability is emerging as a major goal of education, affirmed in the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). Discover hands-on activities to integrate global sustainability as an effective framework for teaching core subjects and skills such as critical thinking, information literacy, writing, speaking, and listening. We'll share examples of how schools, teachers, and students are leading the way toward a globally sustainable future; examine different models for curriculum integration; and work through a template to create your own unit.

Hands-on Lessons on Global Equity and Quality of Life

How can we help our students see the connections between scarcity, prosperity, and equity in the world – and understand their own role in fostering quality of life and well-being from the local to the global level? We'll look at basic graphs and walk through activities that allow students to experience the effects of inequity and examine the effectiveness of traditional economic indicators like GDP. Students have an opportunity to develop their own criteria for measuring classroom, community, and global well-being – in ways that account for the environment, people, AND economics!

Ideas and Resources for Implementing Effective Social Studies CBAs

This workshop is designed to help teachers in Washington state to introduce and implement the Social Studies Classroom-Based Assessments in engaging ways. Facing the Future's activity-based lessons and simulations provide relevant content and promote student interest and skills in critical thinking, taking positions, persuasive writing, discussion, and problem-solving. Participants will walk through a framework of classroom activities, strategies, and resources for the Humans and the Environment CBA (for high school and middle school geography). We will also make connections to other CBAs, including those in civics.

Seeing the Big Picture: Media Literacy and Global Issues

What are the economic, political, and social forces that drive the dramatic events we see reported in the news? How does advertising influence quality of life? This workshop examines common assumptions about the world and the role of individuals in it. We'll present engaging hands-on activities that help students understand the systems, relationships, and worldviews that shape global trends – and transition from information to vision and action.

Teaching about Governance, Policy-Making, and Global Issues

This session presents dynamic lessons to teach about governance and global issues. Through simulations students experience the process of finding common interests, forming coalitions and lobbying, as well as the choices policy-makers face in balancing short- and long-term costs and benefits. Skills targeted include critical thinking, media literacy, oral and written communication, collaboration, problem-solving and creative initiative.

Using Systems Thinking to Educate Effective Global Citizens

How can we prepare our students to approach the world in a way that does not overwhelm them with the complex challenges we face, but rather empowers them with knowledge, skills, and attitudes to create a more peaceful and sustainable planet? We'll explore how concepts such as systems thinking and worldview can expand our consciousness and stimulate positive change on important global issues.

What's Ailing Us? Exploring Global Health Connections

From fast food to malaria, health challenges affect us locally and globally. Join us for a dynamic exploration of the interdependencies between health and other global issues. Discover activity-based lessons that engage students to think critically and constructively about how to improve the health of our planet through personal action and structural change.