The Green Education Foundation (GEF) offers a great curriculum that uses the building as a teaching tool - see PDF available online, http://www.greeneducationfoundation.org (click on the "green building" tab). This program is in it's pilot stage, but I don't think you have to participate in the pilot program - looks like you can just use the materials. You will notice that the lesson plans included here are for Kindergarten -2nd grade, but a full range of grade levels should be available very soon.
This program is nice because it offers a full 10 hour/15-lesson curriculum, complete with a teachers manual, unit plan, pacing guide and all lesson plans. All of the lessons (in the K-2nd curriculum) use Science, English, and Social Studies.
If I had this resource when we started this project, it would have been a HUGE time saver... I think you still need to involve your design team in the curriculum development, but this is a great resource, whether you use it as a starting point or as a plug-and-play curriculum. I'm assuming LEED-Schools will accept it, since it is being developed in partnership between USGBC and GEF :)
Anya Fiechtl
ArchitectBuro Happold
74 thumbs up
October 20, 2011 - 10:19 pm
Sorry, the PDF link is http://www.greeneducationfoundation.org/images/stories/School_as_a_Teach...
This link will probably be outdated in the future (since it's currently in the pilot stage), so just go to their website and navigate to the "green buildings" tab.
Tim Hoeft
AIA, LEED APStraughn Trout Architects, LLC
94 thumbs up
November 16, 2011 - 12:25 pm
We have a LEED for Schools 2009 project that is involved in the GEF Pilot Program. The building is a high school (11th & 12th grades on a community college campus) that is offering their Green Building Course as a semester elective. After submitting for this credit in the Design Review, we were denied the point because "two classes of 23 students meeting twice a week" that are enrolled in the elective did not match our PIF3 Occupant and Usage data of 225 students. "Documentation does not confirm that all full-time students at the school will receive ten or more hours of classroom instruction per year as part of this curriculum... for future submittals, please provide confirmation that all students at the school will receive at least ten hours of classroom instruction per year as part of this curriculum."
Anyone have any suggestions of overcoming this? I believe that it is unrealistic to assume that every student be required to take a course at the 11th and 12th grade level.
Thanks!
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
November 19, 2011 - 10:21 pm
Tim, is the issue that you are just providing curriculum for the high school students and GBCI is asking what about the community college students?If that's the case I'm not sure what to advise. I agree that it would not be reasonable to expect college students to use h.s. curriculum, but to meet this credit you would technically need to provide curriculum to those students as well, unless it can be sucessfully argued that they should be exempt. However, exempting most of the population of the building doesn't seem to really fit the credit intent.
Cynthia Estrada
LEED AP BD&CSDS Architects, Inc.
48 thumbs up
January 4, 2013 - 10:25 am
Speaking of community colleges; has anyone parlayed this into credit at the post-secondary level?
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
February 1, 2013 - 3:39 pm
Cindy, I just checked GBIG.org for certified projects that have earned this credit, and at a glance I don't see any post-secondary projects.