Page 62 - THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Cooperative Education

THE ONTARIO CURRICULUM, GRADES 11 AND 12 | Cooperative Education
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
Ontario’s education system will prepare students with the knowledge, skills, perspectives, and practices they need to be environmentally responsible citizens. Students will understand our fundamental connections to each other and to the world around us through our relationship to food, water, energy, air, and land, and our interaction with all living things. The education system will provide opportunities within the classroom and the community for students to engage in actions that deepen this understanding.
Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow: A Policy Framework for Environmental Education in Ontario Schools, 2009, p. 6
Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow: A Policy Framework for Environmental Education in Ontario Schools outlines an approach to environmental education that recognizes the needs of
all Ontario students and promotes environmental responsibility in the operations of all levels of the education system.
The three goals outlined in Acting Today, Shaping Tomorrow are organized around the themes of teaching and learning, student engagement and community connections, and environmental leadership. The first goal is to promote learning about environmental issues and solutions. The second is to engage students in practising and promoting environmental stewardship, both in the school and in the community. The third stresses the importance of having organizations and individuals within the education system provide leadership by implementing and promoting responsible environmental practices throughout the system so that staff, parents, community members, and students become dedicated to living more sustainably.
Cooperative education offers many opportunities for accomplishing these goals. Students can explore how various sectors address environmental concerns and improve their practices in order to be more environmentally responsible. Students can contribute to, and possibly improve, environmental practices in their cooperative education placement by, for example, designing more energy-efficient processes in a manufacturing setting, researching native plants suitable for a landscaping project, or creating effective communi- cations about recycling and waste systems in the placement.
A resource document – The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9–12: Environmental Education, Scope and Sequence of Expectations – has been prepared to assist teachers in planning lessons that integrate environmental education with other subject areas. This resource document may help teachers and students in identifying environmental education expectations from the related course and considering these learning opportunities when co-constructing the Student’s Cooperative Education Learning Plan. It identifies curriculum expectations and related examples and prompts in disciplines across the Ontario curriculum that provide opportunities for student learning “in, about, and/or for” the environment. This publication is available on the Ministry of Education’s website, at www.edu.gov.on.ca/ eng/teachers/enviroed/publications.html.
HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS AND COOPERATIVE EDUCATION
Every student is entitled to learn in a safe, caring environment, free from violence and harassment. Research has shown that students learn and achieve better in such environments. A safe and supportive social environment in a school is founded on healthy relationships –
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