The No Impact Curriculum: coming to a school near you
[1]The work that our friend Colin Beavan (a.k.a. No Impact Man [2]) has been always at its core educational. He's been educating all of us about the benefits of a carbon-neutral lifestyle for our health, our wallets, and our planet. Now those same lessons will be available to schoolchildren across the country -- for free! The No Impact Project [3], inspired by Colin's work, has just released a free secondary-school curriculum [4] focused on earth-friendly living featuring a lesson about energy with 1Sky.
When Colin and his family decided to try living for a year in New York City without doing any harm to the environment as part of the No Impact Experiment [5], they attracted worldwide media attention. Colin wrote about his experience in No Impact Man [6] (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), and a Sundance-selected film of the same title [7] recently was released in theaters nationwide.
Why all the fuss? Because the Beavans traded their old habits for more environmentally-friendly ones -- and figured out that doing so actually made their lives happier, healthier and more abundant. People around the world started talking about these discoveries, and thousands have since tried their own "No Impact Experiment."
Divided into five individual lessons, each co-authored by environmental nonprofit leaders, the No Impact Curriculum [4] focuses on:
- Consumption
- Energy
- Food
- Transportation
- Water
Each multi-media lesson incorporates snippets from Colin's book and the "No Impact Man" film to encourage middle and high school students to explore the effects that their everyday behavior has on the environment, as well as their health and well-being. The lessons also will challenge students to think about how the systems in our present society influence our lifestyle choices in ways that are often detrimental to the environment. Ultimately, this curriculum will guide students to take action both individually and with others to bring about positive change.
Visit the No Impact Project site for more information or to download the free No Impact Project Curriculum [4].
