Teaching The SGD’s

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals 2015 were developed with the intention of harmonizing three core components as we rapidly move towards an unknown future: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection.  They serve as the foundation for Green School’s middle school ‘thematics’ curriculum. Green School’s mission is ‘A Community of Learners Making Our World Sustainable’ and the Green School middle school day is broken into three frames:

1. Thematic Frame
2. Proficiency Frame
3. Experiential Frame

It is during the thematic frame of the day that students in grades six through eight focus their learning on the Sustainable Development Goals and intentionally work towards making our world sustainable.  In our thematics frame we aim to foster the development of students building background knowledge and understanding of the various issues outlined in the seventeen goals and work to brainstorm ways in which they can contribute to making our world more sustainable in the context of these various goals.

In my first three years at Green School, I had the opportunity to teach middle school thematics in both seventh and eighth grade classrooms and in doing so had the opportunity to creatively design content and unit plans for ten of the seventeen goals including SDG’s #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 15, and 16.