The Aldo Leopold Foundation is pleased to announce the release of an updated Leopold Education Project curriculum!
If you are an environmental educator, you know how important hands-on, inquiry-based outdoor experiences are to helping students understand and connect with the natural world. Leopold himself also taught and leaned this way throughout his career, ultimately leading to his call for a land ethic: a moral code of conduct that asks us to care deeply about strengthening the connections between human and natural communities.
Inspired by the land ethic idea and the essays in Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, the 20 lessons in this 84-page spiral-bound print curriculum build skills in observation, plant and animal identification, land stewardship, natural history, writing and reflection, and environmental values.
Lessons are designed primarily for middle school and high school age students, but are also easily adapted for use with elementary age children, families, and adults.
Features of Updated Leopold Education Project Curriculum
The new curriculum guide is an update and consolidation of the wide array of Leopold Education Project resources developed since its creation in 1994. To create it, we combined similar lessons, and made adaptations to ensure lessons would be easy to implement in broad geographies. We also strengthened the connections to A Sand County Almanac, and to Aldo Leopold and his style of teaching and learning.
In addition, the new lessons have been correlated with the national Next Generation Science Standards to help educators implement the Leopold Education Project in a formal classroom environment. You can read more about the goals of the consolidation project on our blog.
To encourage educators to explore the new resource, we are offering a free download of two sample lessons and a sneak preview of the full curriculum guide.
From the classroom to the bird blind, and from our wilderness areas to our own backyards, Leopold’s ideas about caring for land, people, and all that connects us have great relevance for the next generation. You can order the new curriculum in our store, or get a copy by attending an LEP educator workshop.
Check our calendar of events to see upcoming workshops, or connect with your local LEP State Coordinator to request one.
Photo: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge