State Education & Environment Roundtable

The EIC Model™ professional development program also utilizes activities, discussions and team-based working sessions to: ·
·· explore the change process; ·
·· discuss brain-based and other learning theories as they relate to the EIC Model™; ·
·· examine the role of service-learning and reflection in the EIC implementation process; and, ·
·· utilize authentic assessment methods.

The seminar facilitators model the process that teachers will use with their students as they guide the participants through activities, small-group work and outside explorations to help them fully understand the EIC Model™. As the school teams conduct investigations in local natural and community settings, they discover learning and teaching opportunities that advance thinking skills and improve acquisition of content knowledge in a variety of traditional disciplines.

Participants discover how various subject areas can support and enhance the instructional success of the curriculum. They learn how state and district standards can be simultaneously addressed through the EIC Model™ as they integrate learning across the disciplines. The educators also identify problems and issues that may potentially lead to student projects and service-learning activities.

Supporting Documents and Resources
A variety of tools support the SEER’s EIC Professional Development Program. These resources are used to introduce the EIC Model™, present the benefits of environment-based educational approaches and guide educators through the design and implementation of an EIC program in their school. Participants in SEER’s EIC Professional Development Program receive the following materials:
1. The seminar workbook, entitled Planning an EIC Program in Your School, guides the participants through exercises that help them design an individualized EIC implementation plan. Included in the workbook is SEER’s step-by-step curriculum mapping procedure.
2. The EIC Program Evaluation Action Plan outlines are used by the EIC leadership team and school’s instructional team to determine program outcomes; define indicators of success; designate needed resources and evaluation procedures; and, delineate targeted timeframes.
3. Rubrics, Implementing and Strengthening an EIC Program in Your School, provide participants with a means of self-evaluating their current instructional practices. Educators also make use of these rubrics as formative, self-evaluation instruments.
4. The User-friendly Handbook for Project Evaluation presents quantitative and qualitative methods for conducting outcome evaluations.
5. The research report, Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning, is used to present evidence of the educational efficacy of EIC. Educators are also guided in using these materials to encourage involvement in the EIC program by their colleagues.
6. Two video documentaries entitled Beyond Walls, Across Disciplines and Closing the Achievement Gap: A Video Summary provide a visual accounting of successful EIC programs and the educational benefits of EIC. Beyond Walls introduces an elementary, middle and high school where teachers use EIC to improve motivation, learning and academic achievement. Closing the Achievement Gap features teaching teams using EIC to create innovative, interdisciplinary instruction to enhance group and individual learning.
7. The Education Commission of the States handout documents the inclusion of the EIC model in the ECS “Programs & Practices” listing, signifying that schools can adopt SEER’s program as their means of implementing federally funded comprehensive school reform.
8. A Natural History Magazine article features several of the case study schools that were part of the national research project.
9. A Terrain Magazine article includes descriptions of several environment-based school programs and highlights the educational benefits of EIC.
10. A Green Teacher Magazine article includes essays by teachers and an administrator from six of the study schools.