Seeking to scale, ASU’s Sustainability Teachers Academy goes online
Educators Andrea Lopez and Jennifer Morales Stallard take time to enjoy the view during a Sustainability Teachers Academy Fellowship. The Sustainability Teachers Academy facilitates programs that support teachers in the implementation of sustainability into the classroom.
For a decade, Arizona State University’s Sustainability Teachers Academy, a part of Lifelong Learning in the College of Global Futures, has been supporting teachers through the Walton Sustainability Teachers Academy.
The Walton Sustainability Teachers Academy was initially founded through a generous donation from the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation, and has reached hundreds of educators in all 50 states. Held in person from 2015 to 2019, and in synchronous online format during the pandemic in 2020, the Walton Sustainability Teachers Academy provided an opportunity for educators across the country to learn about sustainability education and implement projects in their schools.
Now, it has moved to a new 100% self-paced online course designed to reach more teachers. After taking the course, educators may apply for Learning Labs, which emphasize cohort-based, hands-on project implementation.
The biggest change to the program is scale.
“When the program had in-person cohorts, it could realistically only impact a maximum of about a hundred K-12 educators each year,” said Ryan Johnson, who leads the College of Global Futures Lifelong Learning team. “Now this program can reach countless educators around the country – and even the entire world.”
The online course is hosted on the Professional Educators Learning Hub through a collaboration with the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation. It is a two-hour professional development opportunity that is offered at no cost to educators.
In the course, educators can expect to learn the essentials of sustainability and develop practical methods for incorporating the topic without increasing their workload. It was developed for educators that have little to no experience with sustainability, but will still be helpful for experienced educators.
“I taught a sustainability course at the high school level for six years,” noted Allison Wolf, one of the online course authors and a Senior Program Coordinator for the Sustainability Teachers Academy.
“This is exactly the resource that I needed when I started teaching. It would’ve changed my perspective on sustainability, and probably would have transformed the way I taught the subject, much earlier in my career.”
For more information on Walton Sustainability Teachers Academy or other Sustainability Teachers Academy programs, you can visit the Sustainability Teachers Academy page.