These days, recycle, reduce and reuse is the new mantra in schools as educators, politicians and parents push for increased environmental education and ecological awareness in California classrooms. Just two or three decades ago, environmental instruction in California typically consisted of a week away at Outdoor Education during fifth or sixth grade, which in Northern California included the chance to lick a banana slug and identify huge swaths of poison oak. Classroom instruction often combines science, environmental awareness and a sense of personal responsibility - a kind of green civics - but in 2010, California will offer a free environmental education curriculum. The tour gave the participants ideas about how to bring the Northern California watershed into classrooms, giving students an understanding of how the snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada and the sewage plants in Santa Clara affect the bay - including the two bat rays the teachers saw in the shallows. Teaching environmental education requires understanding the cultural background of students, many of whom have no experience interacting with nature and little exposure to environmental stewardship, said Lucy Schmidt, one of the canoe trippers and a teacher at Oakland’s World Academy, a charter school in the Fruitvale neighborhood. read more

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