GRANT RECIPIENTS:

Brad Stocker, ESL/Foreign Languages, Kendall Campus
bstocker@mdc.edu
Roy Schwab, ESL Foreign Languages, Kendall Campus
rschwab@mdc.edu

This project will develop new curricula within current state descriptions using environmental and ecological issues for content for an existing intensive levels 5/6 program. The courses are the four content areas, reading writing, speech, and grammar, for the advanced two levels of ESL. These courses are currently integrated and team-taught. The new curricula will approach the ecological and environmental topics from multiple academic perspectives and will engage all of the requisite ESL skills.

The intention of this Learning Innovations Project, New Environments for ESL Students, has been to develop new curricula using ecological and environmental issues and themes for content for an existing Intensive Advanced ESL Program and maintaining and addressing the requisite skills and content objectives and goals of the ESL courses.

The lessons in this project show students the unique biosphere in which we live and demonstrate to them why earth literacy is important in their lives. Topics have covered what was proposed: economic, cultural, scientific, spiritual, psychological, biological, ethical issues and at the same time involved one or more ESL competencies.

Student feedback that was attained orally and in written form through their work has verified that students are affected by the experiences in these lessons and their interaction with the natural world. The range of the impact varies but in many cases there has been profound change.

Our assessment of the project is that it is successful with students. We see a need to increase the activities that surround issues. The environmental issues will become ever more important in the coming years and have been recognized by the UN and the American public as paramount to overall survival of our species, if not the planet.

We think that there is a strong connection between the natural environment and students’ well being and that this impacts their academic and life skills. Therefore, we will continue to forward the integration of these ideas into the curricula of the institution.

Please refer to the binders previously submitted which are the project.

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We have begun a process and while we are turning in a report and hard copies of the lessons, there is more to be done. We will make this information available on the Kendall ESL/Foreign languages web page. It will also be available through the Environmental Ethics Institute’s web page. Photos from many of the lessons will be available on CD, as will the lessons. In addition, resources used and cited will be ordered for the college and will be generally accessible through Learning Resources, the library and media services.

There are only twenty hard copies made at this time. Twenty is the minimum number that Campus Copy Services will accept and we did not wish to make any more than could conceivably be useful at this time. These copies are printed on recycled paper that we supplied. Soy ink is unavailable on campus as yet.